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THE RISE OF THE 
AMERICAN PEOPLE 



THE RISE OF THE 
AMERICAN PEOPLE 

A Philosophical Interpretation of American History 



BY 



ROLAND G. USHER, PH.D. 



AUTHOR or PAN-GERMAMI8M, 



THE RECONSTRUCTION OF THE ENOLISH 
CHURCH," "THE RISE AND FALL OF THE HIGH 
COMMISilON," ETC. 




I ^M^ yVft 



NEW YORK 

THE CENTURY CO. 

1914 



t ! ^i^ 



Copyright, 1914, by 
The Ckntukt Co. 



Published, April, 1914 



APR 23 I3i4 




OCI.A3 6 9812 



;:*- 



TO 

THE FAIREST AND LOVELIEST OF HER SEX 
MY DAUGHTER FLORENCE, 
ON HER THIRD BIRTHDAY 



PREFACE 

In these days of specialization, the community is divided 
for nearly all purposes into only two classes — the specialists 
and the laymen; and all the specialists are laymen in every 
subject but their own. In those manifold subjects in which 
he is a layman, the modern reader demands a lucid, vivid ac- 
count of results and not of processes, a brief statement of 
the meaning of the development, which can be deduced from 
the array of facts and dates marching down upon him out 
of the past. Assuming these facts to be true and important, 
what do they mean, he asks? Assuming these to be the es- 
sential parts of the puzzle, what is the picture like? A 
specialist himself, the reader knows the value of processes, 
but he has neither the time, inclination, nor skill to perform 
the historical process for himself with even adequate mate- 
rial'?. Hfi asks for results first, for broad outlines and fun- 
daiuental factors, and is willing to waive for the moment the 
question of authorities and the verification of data. He washes 
to learn at once what competent authorities consider to be 
true and cares comparatively little by what precise road they 
reached their conclusions. 

In writing this book it has therefore been my aim to give 
the reader a lucid account of results and not of processes; 
to explain briefly the meaning of the facts of national de- 
velopment, rather than to chronicle the mere sequence of 
events — for, from my point of view, the founding of colonies, 
the granting of charters, the battles, debates and constitu- 
tions are not in themselves history, but simply the material 



PREFACE 

out of which history must be made. I conceive it to be my 
business, not to describe the pieces of the puzzle-picture, nor 
to tell the reader their number nor even their relationship, 
but to give him some point of view where the pieces cease 
to be pieces and blend together into a picture. I believe that 
the essential and elementary "facts" in history are not the 
actual events but the more complex conclusions which are to 
be deduced from a series of such events. 

My indebtedness to the instruction and writings of my 
teacher, Edward Channing, to the works of Rhodes, Van 
Tyne, Beard, Turner, Hart and many others will be only too 
manifest. Here and there I have added foot-notes to ex- 
pand and elucidate the text but without any idea of furnish- 
ing adequate information of the extent or whereabouts of the 
available or valuable material upon the subject. The Guide 
to American History by Channing, Hart, and Turner, the 
bibliographies in Hart's American Nation, will give the 
reader, anxious to verify or expand my narrative, access to 
the literature of the subject. I have used only material that 
is accessible to all, except on a few minor points, and I do 
not claim any novelty or originality for this volume or for 
the ideas expressed in it, beyond the general point of view 
and a much fuller treatment and different emphasis than is 
usual in brief histories upon such topics as States' sover- 
eignty, the growth of nationality, commercial relations with 
the West Indies, the influence of economic and geographical 
factors, and the growth of democracy. 

Washington University, St. Louis, January, 1914. 



CONTENTS 



I PAGE 

THE MEANING OF AMERICAN HISTORY 3-10 

The place of the United States in universal history 3 

Its place in European history 3 

Its chief subject the achieving of nationality 5 

Definition of a nation 5-6 

Slowness of national growth in America 6 

The Revolution and States' rights anti-national 8 

Nationality achieved through the Civil War; Lincoln, the father 

of American nationality 9 

II 

SPANISH AND FRENCH FAILURES 11-17 

Spanish and French exert no influence on the history of the United 

States 11 

Explanation lies in their purpose in coming 12 

in their character 14 

in the strength of the Indians 14 

in the weakness of Spain 15 

The French in the South and in the St. Lawrence 16 

III 
THE ENGLISH GENESIS OF THE UNITED STATES 18-30 

Tlie United States made possible by the control of the Atlantic 

acquired by England in 1588 18 

Emigration was the result of economic forces which made people 

willing to come 19 

and of religious beliefs 21 

and of the reports of explorers 22 

The settlement of Jamestown 23 

The Pilgrims and the settlement of Plymouth 24 

The Puritans and the settlement of Boston 25 

Other colonies founded before 1660 26 

Colonies were made permanent 

by the geographical advantages of the Atlantic coast ... 26 

by the absence of powerful Indian tribes 27 

by the size of Massachusetts 27 

by maize, tobacco, fish, and furs 28 

IV 
THE ECONOMIC GROWTH OF THE COLONIES 31^4 

The most fundamental cause of the Revolution lies in the economic 

strength of the colonies in 1776 31 

The extent of the growth in population 32 

Rapidity of growth explained by immigration 33 



CX)NTENTS 

PA6B 

Foreign elements: Germans, Scotch-Irish, Portuguese .... 34 

Indented servants, criminals, adventurers 36 

Radicalism and restless spirit of immigrants 36 

Only little patches of settlement by 1760 37 

Only common interests: the lack of a medium of exchange with 

Europe 38 

and a dependence upon the West India trade 39 

Character of colonial commerce 39 

The Navigation Acts 41 

Smuggling 42 

The result was a creditor and debtor class in each colony ... 43 

V 

THE ORIGIN OF AMERICAN DEMOCRACY 45-60 

Second fundamental cause of the Revolution lies in the ability of 

the colonies to govern themselves 45 

Democracy a natural indigenous growth 45 

Town government in Massachusetts 46 

Coimty government at the South 48 

Origin of the belief in States' rights 49 

Origin of State governments 50 

Evolution of representative government 52 

The wilderness produces essentially the same forms in all colonies . 55 

Graft, corrupMon, and "rings" 56 

Divergence of institutional development between England and 

America 57 

The men produced by colonial democracy: Washington .... 58 

Franklin 59 

VI 
STATES' SOVEREIGNTY 61-72 

Third fundamental cause of the Revolution lies in the determination 
of Americans from the first to govern themselves without 

actual interference from England 61 

The Colonies always considered themeelves sovereign 61 

Nullification in Massachusetts in 1665 63 

Antiquity of opposition to English interference 64 

Reasons for inefficiency of English supervision 65 

Nullification of the Navigation Acts 68 

English origin of schemes for colonial union 69 

Invariably defeated by principle of States' sovereignty .... 70 

Entire lack of nationality in 1760 71 

VII 
THE IMMEDIATE CAUSES OF THE REVOLUTION 73-91 

The expulsion of the French from Canada made English assistance 

unnecessary and actual independence possible .... 74 

Danger of Indian uprisings past 76 

Active opposition roused by English plans to replace States' 

sovereignty by administrative imion 77 

by the decision to enforce the Navigation Acts and so destroy 

colonial commerce with the West Indies 81 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Prompt nullification of the Sugar and Stamp Acts ..... 82 

The American idea of the English Constitution 86 

Taxation without representation 88 

The real justificaiion of the Revolution ... 90 

VIII 
THE ORGANIZATION OF RESISTANCE 92-105 

Resistance neither national nor spontaneous 92 

Generality of the belief that it was inexpedient . . . . . .92 

Resistance before 1772 sporadic and unorganized 94 

Armed resistance organized by Samuel Adams through Committees 

of Correspondence 97 

The Boston Tea Party a demonstration of intent to resist ... 99 

The Coercive Acts of 1774 101 

Active preparations for resistance begun 103 

Lexington and Concord 103 

Bunker Hill 104 

IX 

FIRST ATTEMPTS AT PERMANENT ORGANIZATION 106-122 

States and individuals stand aloof 106 

Real obstacle in way of cooperation a difference of opinion as to the 

relations of States to each other 107 

All existing organizations extra-legal 107 

Tacit acceptance of Congress and Committees in 1775 by the people 109 

Difficulties in way of instituting central government 110 

Great accession of strength from adhesion to the Revolution of the 

debtor party in each colony 113 

Pressure put upon creditors 114 

Confiscations, robbery 116 

States' sovereignty the real obstacle in the way of the Revolution 117 
Independt.nce imderstood to mean cooperation through some form of 

central government 117 

The Declaration of Independence affirms States' sovereignty . . .118 

Formation of State constitutions 119 

Central administration begun 120 

The French Alliance and the Confederation 121 

X 

WHY WE WON THE REVOLUTION 123-139 

The war was not won by superior force or generalship . . . .123 

A record of defeats. Lack of popular support 124 

The victory due to the fact that the English did not push the war 

till 1778 127 

to the width of the Atlantic 131 

to the strategical geography of the Atlantic coast .... 132 
to the ability of Washington and Greene at wilderness-cam- 
paigning 133 

XI 

THE RESULTS OF THE REVOLUTION 140-150 

The country grew populous and wealthy. A comparatively small 

number of individuals bore the costs and losses of the war 140 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 
The balance of wealth and political power swung from the old 
creditor to the old debtor party, putting the radicals in 

the majority 144 

The victory decided that England should not influence the decision 
of American issues and put the creation of a central gov- 
ernment, the settlement of commercial and monetary 
questions, the definition of the relations of the States to 
each other into the hands of the radicals, who declined to 
meet financial and treaty obligations and adopted States' 
sovereignty as the basis of central and State government 146 

XII 
THE CRITICAL PERIOD 151-167 

The definitive failure of the radical policy . . 151 

Difliculties were superficial and economic 152 

Accentuated by the commercial crisis 152 

by overproduction 153 

by hostile state legislation 155 

by dislocation of business through paper money, interference 

with the collection debts 156 

Necessity of administrative reform 158 

Strong central government a prerequisite 160 

Radical defects of the Confederation 160 

Economic and geographical factors making for imion 162 

The Federal Convention called 166 

XIII 
THE CONSTITUTION 168-181 

The Constitution based upon equality of condition 169 

Character of American life in 1787 ^ . 169 

The people made sovereign -"^' . . 172 

Relation of the States to the Federal government . . P '"^ . . 173 

Relation of the Federal government to the people 174 

"The people" limited to men of property and good character . . . 175 

Powers conferred on Federal government 175 

Federal government to be controlled: 

by the separation of powers 176 

by reservation of local government to the States 176 

by checks and balances 178 

Opposition to the adoption of the Constitution 179 

First elections and the inauguration of Washington 180 

XIV 

THE ESTABLISHMENT OP PERMANENT ADMINISTRATION 

182-195 

The success of the new government due to economic conditions . . 182 
Hamilton's solution of the administrative issues: 

the funding of the Federal and State debts 184 

the provision of a Federal income from the tariff and excise 

taxes 188 

the payment of the army 188 

the provision for currency and fiscal control through the na- 
tional Bank 188 

Jefferson reconciles the Anti-Federalists to the Constitution by his 

principle of looee construction 190 



CONTENTS 

XV PAGE 

THE WAR OF 1812 196-210 

Its causes: as a war between England and America in the economic 
dependence of America upon the European and West India 

trade 196 

as a war between parties in America in the division of interests 
between the commercial and agricultural classes, and 
between the English and French sympathizers .... 201 

The incidents leading to the outbreak: the Jay Treaty, the move- 
ment to annex Canada, rights of neutral shipping, the 
press-gang, the Louisiana Purchase, the Chesapeake, the 
Embargo 1!38 

The United States defeated: 

by the geographical factors which won the Revolution . . . 206 
by the outbreak of civil war and the attempt of New England 

to secede 207 

XVI 

THE AlVIERICAN SYSTEM 211-228 

Results of the War of 1812 were to make clear the consequences 

of our economic dependence upon Europe 211 

Cotton: its history; and growth to 1815 212 

Manufacturing in New England the creation of the War .... 213 

Demand for roads and canals in the West 214 

The demand for the protective tariff 215 

The demand for the extension of slavery: the Missouri Compromise 218 

The demand for Internal Improvements 220 

Effect of protection and Internal Improvements upon the interests 

of the South 221 

The Union and the Constitution attacked by Randolph and Hayne 223 
Webster proclaims the national significance of the Constitution, 1830 225 
The difficulties c-ompromised : the demands of all refused .... 227 

XVII 

JACKSO>r[AN DEMOCRACY 229-240 

Causes of Jeffersonianism and Jacksonianism 229 

The Twelfth Amendment and the popular election of the President 230 
New difficulties and the creation of the caucus to obviate them . .231 

The caucus robs the people of the right to choose 232 

Jackson against the caucus 232 

The origin of national parties 233 

Jacksonian and Jeflersonian democracy contrasted 234 

Webster shows that the Constitution made the people sovereign and 

that States' sovereignty was undemocratic 235 

Growth of Committees in Congress and of the Speakership . . . 236 

Interpretation of the Constitution by Marshall 237 

Democratic radicalism in the States 238 

The Spoils System introduced 238 

Subconscious growth of nationality 239 

xvrii 

THE TWO DR^RGING SECTIONS 241-256 

The possibilities of cotton-culture 241 

Effects of cotton on slavery : methods of culture ; 242 



(X)NTENTS 

PAGE 

value of land and slaves trebled ; demand for virgin soil . . . 243 

Expansion and growth of the Gulf States 243 

The South becomes a country of one crop 244 

Statistics of Alabama in 1850 245 

Agitation about slavery: Anti-slavery 245 

Arguments concerning slavery compared 24& 

Character of development in North and West of diversified industry 

and scientific intensive agriculture 248 

Machinery and transportation; canals and railroads 249 

New complexity of economic fabric 250 

Results upon social and intellectual life 251 

Geographical and geological factors causing a division of economic 

life along Mason and Dixon's line and the Ohio River . 252 

Results of these factors upon institutional life 255 

The Civil War a misunderstanding between honest, sincere men . . 256 

XIX 
TEXAS AND THE MEXICAN WAR 257-268 

By 1835 it was clear to the South that the profits of cotton-culture 
were limited only by the amount of virgin soil, and that 
the supply of virgin soil eaft of the Mississippi and south 
of the Missouri Compromise line was already exhausted 257 

Movement to colonize and tlien to annex Texas 259 

The Mexican War adds more territory . > 261 

The settlement of Canadian and Oregonian bbundaries adds still 

more 262 

The fight to open the territories to slavery 263 

The complex tangle of interests 263 

The Compromise of 1850 267 

Secession openly preached at the South 268 

XX 

THE IRREPRESSIBLE CONFLICT 269-281 

The growth at the North of the belief that slavery was wrong . . 269 

Uncle Tom's Cabin 269 

Kansas-Nebraska; the sack of Lawrence; the assault on Sumner; 

the South accepts the responsibility 270-273 

The formation of the Republican Party 275 

Dred Scott Case 275 

Lincoln-Douglas debates put the matter plainly and unmistakably . 277 

Helper's Impending Crisis 279 

The agitation for the reopening of the slave-trade 280 

John Brown's Raid 280, 

XXI 

THE CAUSES OF SECESSION 282-296 

The antiquity of the belief in the Tightness and legality of secession 282 

Early schemes for two or more confederacies 283 

Fundamental causes economic and geographical 284 

Immediate causes of the War 285 

belief tliat the political tie of the Federal government alone 

stood in the way of the extension of slavery 287 



CONTENTS / 

PAGE 

realization that the South must fight before the disparity 
between North and South became greater j the sections 

compared 288 

the belief that cotton was king 292 

the belief that the Mississippi would force the western States 

to market their produce in the South and compel secession 293 
Lincoln's election the signal not the cause of secession .... 296 

XXII 

SECESSION AND COMPROMISE 297-307 

The South secedes 297 

The Confederacy based upon slavery 299 

Northern attempts at compromise 299 

The Southern leaders reject compromise 301 

Why the War did not break out in March 1861 303 

The casus belli: the firing on Sumter 304 

The North arms . i. , 305 

XXIII 
THE ClVJh WAR AS A MILITARY EVENT 308-316 

The strategical geography of ihe Southern States 308 

Why Virginia became the cjiief field of war 309 

Strategical geography of Virginia 309 

The importance of the Shenandoah Valley 311 

Strategical geography of the Mississippi Valley 312 

The general strategy of the War 314 

XXIV 
WHY THE NORTH WON 317-339 

The physical and economic preponderance of the North . . . .317 

The failure of the border States to secede 318 

The rapid recovery of the North from the comimercial Crisis of 

1861-2 318 

The neutrality of England and France 320 

The blockade prevents the exportation of cotton and the importa- 
tion of anything else 322 

Administrative inefficiency at the South 324 

Financial mismanagement at the South 329 

Arbitrary infringement of liberty of individuals and States . . .331 

The reasons for the length of the War 333 

XXV 

THE RESULTS OF THE CIVIL WAR 340-359 

The achieving of nationality 340 

Lincoln the father of American nationality 344 

How the War "created" the nation 345 

Geographical factors making for nationality 347 

The development and enriching of the North 350 

Tlie collapse of the old regime at the South 351 

The artificiality of the slave power proved 351 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Lack of community life at the South revealed 353 

Slavery seen to be undemocratic and abolished 354 

The extreme economic exhaustion of the South 356 

The effect of the logic of "facts" upon popular sentiment North 

and South 357 

XXVI 

THE ISSUE OF RECONSTRUCTION 360-368 

Complexity of the problem 360 

Influence of actual conditions 362 

Attitude of the Republican Party 364 

The issue places a new obstacle in the way of nationality . . . 365 

Presidential Reconstruction 366 

XXVII 

CONGRESSIONAL RECONSTRUCTION: ITS CAUSES AND 
METHODS 369-391 

Objections to the Presidential solution 369 

Hatred of the executive and of Johnson 370 

Realization that the Southern States had actually been out of 

the Union 370 

Fear that the South meant to reenslave the negro as a punish- 
ment for crime 371 

Fear that the Southern and Northern Democrats would out- 
number the Republicans in Congress and undo the results 

of the War by statute 375 

Suspicions of the new Southern militia 375 

The Reconstruction Acts and the Fourteenth Amendment . . . 37Q 

The execution of the Acts 379 

The election of 1867 and the Fifteenth Amendment 380 

XXVIII 
THE SOLID SOUTH 382^391 

Solithem feeling towards Congressional Reconstruction .... 382 

Character of Reconstructed State governments 383 

The South saved by the creation of the Solid South 385 

The practical disfranchisement of the negro 386 

Southern problems really at bottom economic and solved by economic 

forces 388 

The negro problem 388 

The emancipation of the poor white 391 

XXIX 

NATIONAL PROBLEMS 392^04 

The fundamental problems of American development 392 

Their solution by economic forces 392 

Economic dependence on Europe was due to the backwardness 
of the country and was obviated by its growth in popula- 
tion and wealth 392 

Divergence of interests resulted from the existence of sections 
in different phases of economic growth and was solved by 
the rapid growth of the West and South 393 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

And by the discovery of gold and silver 394 

Quarrels of States, of sections, and of individuals due to racial, 
economic, and institutional differences have been obviated 
. by the shifting of population and economic interdependence 395 

New national Problems: 

The Nationalization of industry and its effect on institutions 

and parties 397 

The effect of the size of the country upon the premises of 

democracy 398 

The effect of the inequality of property on the premises of 

democracy 399 

The worst fears of the fathers realized 401 

The new conception of the function of government .... 402 
The new concept of the State 403 

INDEX 407 



THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 



THE RISE 
OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 



THE MEANING OF AMERICAN HISTORY 

When", in the year 1890, within our own memories, the fron- 
tier in the United States officially ceased to exist, the great 
westward march of the Aryan race, begun thousands of years 
ago, came to an end and definitely closed the only period of 
the world's history which man himself has recorded. The 
tide of westward movement, which had streamed out of the 
East into the West for so many centuries, breasted the peaks 
of that lofty mountain-range which Benton used to call the 
"shining mountains," and West met East. The history of 
the United States is the story of the last and geographically 
longest stage in this westward progress of the Aryan race. 
Considering the vastness of the area reclaimed from the wil- 
derness and the development there of an advanced civiliza- 
tion within the brief space of three centuries, the achieve- 
ment is without parallel in the records of the race. Such is 
the place of the United States in universal history. 

A nation becomes, however, a great factor in human de- 
velopment as much by the splendor of its ideals as by reason 
of its actual achievement. Homer placed the Elysian Fields, 
the abode of supreme happiness, in the West, the land of the 
setting sun. Out to those unknown regions, where Phoebus 
Apollo stabled his steeds at evening, went Odysseus to talk 
with his father's spirit; out into the West Virgil led ^neas 
to see the dead heroes, riding and leaping in the green 

3 



4 THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 

meadows under perpetual sunshine. The grim sagas of the 
Norsemen tell us how the dead chieftain was laid upon a 
couch on board his long ship ; how the great sail was hoisted 
and how the raven standard flapped sinister wings against 
the mast; how the flaring torches flung a beam of light to 
guide the ship on its last long journey out into the West 
across the great water to that shore where Odin waited to 
welcome his chosen warrior to the halls of Valhalla. Some 
prophetic impulse led the bards to make the West symbolic 
of the hopes and ideals of the Aryan race. There, the 
dreamer of dreams has built his castle; there, the seer of 
visions has beheld great empires, boundless wealth, inconceiv- 
able happiness. The dull eyes of struggling European peas- 
ants have for three centuries seen in the United States the 
Elysian Fields. The search for them in the West had been 
unremitting; only from America came back word that Elys- 
ium had been found, a land truly flowing with milk and 
honey. America has been the hope of the despairing, the 
refuge of the pursued ; here the homeless have found shelter ; 
the hungry, food; the sick at heart, courage; and the op- 
pressed, liberty. No one who has asked in faith has been 
turned empty away. The United States holds the unique and 
superb position of embodying for millions of men and women 
the racial vision of an abode of the Blessed in the West. Such 
is her place in the history of Western Europe. 

But for this deep and abiding racial belief in the location of 
the Elysian Fields, the present United States would not 
exist. The first explorers would never have agreed that their 
hopes could find realization in the cotton fields and rice 
swamps of the South, in the wheat fields of Dakota and in 
the cod fisheries of New England. The incentive for the 
toil and suffering indispensable to the discovery and ex- 
ploration of this continent came rather from the expecta- 
tion, firm in the minds of Spaniard and Englishman, that he 
would next day see gleaming upon the distant horizon the 
silver walls of the Seven Cities of Cibola, or the deep red 
glow of the enormous carbuncle that lighted the broad halls 



THE MEANING OF AMERICAN HISTORY 6 

of the wondrous palace of Prester John. The expectations 
of standing upon the shores of the sea that washed the is- 
land of Cipango, where the streets were paved with sheets of 
solid gold, lured Champlain up the St. Lawrence and brought 
La Salle into the Mississippi Valley. The search for the 
fabulous wealth and mythological personages did not cease 
until the eighteenth century. The dreams and visions of 
men, the persistent search for a will-o'-the-wisp can alone 
explain much of the exploration and development of the 
United States. Only the dissatisfaction of men with what 
they found, their abiding faith in something better further 
west could have colonized a great continent in three centuries. 
This splendid westward progress which gives us our place 
in the history of the Aryan race, the ideal of liberty and 
freedom which has created for us a unique place in the 
history of Western Europe, are not the chief facts in Ameri- 
can history. The history of the United States is in the 
truest sense the story of the assemblage of the crude ma- 
terials for a great people and of the development in them of 
a national consciousness. We shall entirely miss the most 
vital fact about this story if we allow ourselves to as- 
sume even for an instant that anything deserving the name 
of nation existed in North America in 1660, in 1760, in 1789, 
or even in 1861. American history does not describe the life 
story of a nation, nor even the development or growth of a 
nation, but the very birth of the nation, which, as such, is 
still in its infancy. The fortuitous collection of many in- 
dividuals upon the same sea-coast does not of itself create a 
nation, nor do these people become a nation when they first 
grudgingly permit a common government to perform certain 
limited functions which none of them could individually per- 
form at all. A nation is not made by the adoption of con- 
stitutions nor by obedience to law; its existence is not mani- 
fested by conventions nor legislatures; for it is a spiritual 
bond between the people of a community and does not exist 
simply in the physical, geographical, economic, or con- 
stitutional factors necessary to its existence and expression. 



e THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 

A nation exists only in the spiritual consciousness of a great 
people and consists literally of the ideals, aspirations, hopes, 
and fears which they have in common. Nor is this nation 
made with hands. Its constituent parts think the same, not 
because they vote to agree, but because they do agree in very 
fact. They possess the same aspirations and ideals, are loyal 
and patriotic to their common government, not from policy 
or from desire, but because such psychological factors are 
realities. Until this spiritual bond exists, until the people 
become conscious of its actuality, no sentient, conscious 
national existence can be predicated. No amount of fervent 
wishing by individuals that it might be, no eager attempts 
to make it so, can be accepted as proof of its existence. A 
nation either is or is not. It cannot be "created"; it must 
grow into being. Certainly, the very least we can demand 
as proof of its existence, is the expressed conviction of all 
classes of the people in all parts of the country that a na- 
tional tie is desirable and possible. So long as men could 
fiercely debate, as Washington phrased it, "whether we are 
one nation or thirteen," so long as one great section of the 
community could maintain with threats and at last with arms 
its complete independence of and difference from the rest 
of the people, no true national bond could exist. 

But no one who reflects can be surprised that nationality 
is as yet young in this country. "We have scarcely possessed 
for decades the outward physical and political expressions of 
nationality which most European countries have had for 
centuries: — ^territorial unity; continuous settlement through- 
out the whole area ; something approaching stability of popu- 
lation; — which can alone make possible the actual experi- 
ence in living together from which community of sentiment 
must come. For two centuries and more, the American peo- 
ple has been struggling into physical existence and has needed 
all the energy of its members to cope with the essentials of 
individual and community life. Nationally, we have been 
undeveloped rather than wrongly developed ; we have lacked 
national consciousness from the same inevitable reasons that 



THE MEANING OF AMERICAN HISTORY 7 

prevent the man from preceding the child. In Burke's 
expressive phrase, we were "a people still, as it were, in the 
gristle, and not yet hardened into the bone." We had to 
become a nation by feeling, thinking, living, and by develop- 
ing through the experience of decade after decade that unity 
of ideals and aims whose expression" is patriotism. As a 
nation, we have yet to share each other's crusts, drink to the 
dregs the cup of national humiliation, be welded one to 
another by the devastation of sword and fire, by those hor- 
rible catastrophes that make nations old in experience be- 
fore their time. As yet we have suffered as parts, never as 
an entity; we have not yet rejoiced as a people with such 
a delirious, spontaneous outburst as thrilled England after 
the defeat of the Armada or Germany after the victory at 
Sedan. 

Ours has been a growth, unspoiled and lovely, the natural, 
normal growth of the child, protected from luxury in its 
adolescence, furnished with every necessity as manhood ap- 
proached; lacking experience, not knowing how or when to 
utilize his resources, but sane, strong, courageous, indomi- 
table. There is something of an epic splendor about this 
growth to rugged physical manhood of a great people. Like 
Anta3us, we drew our strength from the ground. "We built 
our house with our bare hands and fashioned our national 
physical body in an incredibly short time out in a cleansing 
wilderness far from the sins and lusts of the race and out of 
materials unstained by the drums and tramplings of Euro- 
pean conquest. Thus were we purged of the dross and freed 
from the subtle temptations of the old world. Our sins were 
the animal cravings of the boy for too much food, too many 
clothes, — the revel of the child in the riotous pleasures of 
the race, from curiosity rather than from wickedness. 

The events of American history are more obviously con- 
cerned with the relationship of entities than with their at- 
tempts to unite into a whole. Perforce we study Massachu- 
setts and Virginia, the ideas of the North and the views of the 
South, not as parts in relation to the whole, but as separate 



8 THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 

entities whose relation to each other has yet to be defined. 
The debates in Congress were occupied with the interests of 
sections of the country, not as parts of a whole but as antag- 
onistic entities whose common interest and bond must be dis- 
covered and could never be assumed to exist. Indeed, it is 
impossible, as Webster and Lincoln pointed out, to reconcile 
the ideas of States' sovereignty and of Nullification with any 
other conception of a central government than that of a 
fortuitous, anomalous, and technical bond of dubious value.^ 
The theory of States' rights meant nothing if it did not assert 
the superiority of the interests of a single State over those 
of the aggregation of States ; Nullification was an empty form 
unless it meant that each State possessed vital interests so 
widely divergent from those of other States that its very ex- 
istence would be at stake if it was to admit the right of the 
central government to adopt and enforce any policy which a 
majority of the other States might deem expedient. Both 
States' rights and Nullification premised the absence of that 
normal community of interests, of that essential uniformity 
of thought and ideals, upon which alone one nation in the 
proper sense of the word could be based. They denied the 
existence of a whole of which they were severally parts ; they 
solemnly affirmed the existence of a formal relationship be- 
tween entities absolutely complete within themselves. Seces- 
sion stated in actual words the contention of a great section 
of the country that two nations really existed within the 
bond of the Federal Government and that the formal recog- 

1 "The tendency of all these ideas and sentiments is obviously to 
bring the Union into discussion, as a mere question of present and 
temporary expediency; nothing more than a mere matter of profit and 
loss. The Union is to be preserved, while it suits local and temporary 
purposes to preserve it; and to be sundered whenever it shall be found 
to thwart such purposes. Union, of itself, is considered by the dis- 
ciples of this school as hardly a good. . . . Tliey cherish no deep and 
fixed regard for it, fiowing from a thorough conviction of its absolute 
and vital necessity to our welfare." Webster, first reply to Hayne, 
Jan. 20, 1830. Worlcs, III, 258-9. "Again, if the United States be not 
a government proper, but an association of States in the nature of con- 
tract merely . . ." Lincoln, First Inaugural Address, Nicolay and 
Hay, Abraham Lincoln, Complete Works, VI, 174. 



THE MEANING OF AMERICAN HISTORY 9 

nition of this obvious political and constitutional fact was so 
vital to the well-being of the South that those States were pre- 
pared to demand its acceptance at the point of the bayonet. 
The doctrine of the constitutionality of secession affirmed that 
the separation would be legal according to the Constitution be- 
cause there had always been entities in America, not an or- 
ganic whole. The Civil War was not a fight for the preserva- 
tion of the Constitution or of a technical political bond called 
the Union, but a war to remove the last and greatest obstacle 
in the way of the formation of an American nation — the be- 
lief of nearly one-half the country that a single nation not 
only did not exist but was neither possible nor desirable. 
The great number of Southern men who accepted the action 
of their State as superior in obligation even to their own per- 
sonal conclusions that the war was wrong, proves absolutely 
the lack of a distinctly national consciousness in 1861. 

The result of the Civil War was, therefore, something in- 
finitely grander than the preservation of a constitutional 
form known as the Union. The North was inspired by the 
vision of *'a noble and puissant nation, rousing herself like a 
strong man after sleep and shaking her invincible locks, as an 
eagle mewing her mighty youth and kindling her undazzled 
eyes at the full mid-day beam"; the vision of a nation one 
and inseparable, in which the rights of the whole should 
never be sacrificed to an individual or to any body of indi- 
viduals. Just as the greatness of Webster consisted in the 
fact that he made the North see this vision, so the greatness 
of Lincoln's achievement lay in the fact that he made North 
and South alike realize that the aim of the war was not so 
much the abolition of slavery or the denial of States' rights^ 

2 "I have, therefore, in every case thought it proper to keep the in- 
tegrity of the Union prominent as the primary object of the contest 
on our part. . . . The Union must be preserved." Lincoln, Message to 
Congress, Dec. 3, 1861. See also the First Inaugural Address, the first 
paragraphs. "My paramount object in this struggle is to save the 
Union, and is not eitlier to save or to destroy slavery." Lincoln's letter 
to Horace Greeley, August 22, 1862. Nicolay and Hay, Complete Works, 
VIII, 16. See also Grant's correspondence for 1861 in Letters of TJ. 8. 
Grant, edited by J. G. Cramer. (1913.) 



10 THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 

as the creation of a mighty nation, powerful in her grasp of 
a continent and two oceans, rich in the fruits of united en- 
deavor, invincible by reason of her consciousness of a noble 
and splendid ideal. The superiority of the whole over the 
parts, the splendor of the aspirations bom of designs based 
upon the unity of the people, were the decisive factors in 
favor of the North. The War made Southerners and North- 
erners Americans. The essence of American history then is 
this achieving of nationality by a great people. Than this 
no subject could be greater or more fascinating to the student. 
It is the only instance in all human history where we can 
watch the consciousness of nationality actually dawning in 
the individual mind. 



II 

SPANISH AND FRENCH FAILURES 

We owe the first knowledge of this continent to Norse rovers, 
to Breton or Portuguese fishermen, who told of its fish and 
grapes, but never deemed its existence of greater moment. 
We owe its real discovery to the mistaken geographical no- 
tions of the earth's size and form, prevalent in Western Eu- 
rope at the end of the fifteenth century, which filled a taU, 
ruddy-haired Genoese sailor with visions of incalculable 
wealth and of the salvation of souls unborn, and led him to 
embark a crew of adventurers and criminals in three small, 
leaky vessels for a voyage to find a sea route to India and 
China by sailing west. We owe the name America to an ad- 
venturer, contractor, and sailor, who wrote the first account 
of the Mundus Novus which attained much circulation or 
notoriety. Nevertheless, neither the date of the discovery, 
the person of the discoverer, nor the nation he represented 
exercised then or since any appreciable influence on the his- 
tory of the United States. When the English settlers landed 
at Jamestown in 1607, the Spanish had long relinquished the 
exploration and settlement of the northern Continent and 
had left within the limits of the present United States only 
a handful of soldiers and settlers in Florida and New Mexico 
whose continued existence was made precarious by pestilence, 
famine, and hostile Indians. A century of Spanish effort 
hardly provided the English who followed them with the 
knowledge that land of continental dimensions existed here. 

Yet if Spanish discoverers and explorers contributed noth- 
ing of value to the history of the United States, it was not 
for lack of diligence nor of prodigious effort. They sought 
Cipango with the greatest tenacity among the islands in the 

11 



12 THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 

Caribbean, hunted the South and Central American coasts 
■with assiduity, and even attempted wild guesses at the rela- 
tion the scattered islands and bits of continent bore to the 
maps of Asia already published by travelers and geographers. 
It was plain to most that the great land south of Cuba was a 
part of Asia. Then came Balboa. He pushed across the 
Isthmus of Panama and found the sea on the western side 
(1513). Was the Mundus Novus then in the South and 
was it Asia itself that lay to the North? Magellan in his 
long voyage around the Horn and across the Pacific (1519-21) 
demonstrated that South America was not connected with 
Asia and for the first time gave Europeans some notion of 
the magnitude of the Pacific Ocean, and of the true size of 
the globe. 

Then came to the shores of the northern continent strong 
expeditions, with infantry and cavalry, generals and priests, 
seeking everywhere the great countries of Asia which Marco 
Polo had seen and described. One skirted the northern coast 
of the Gulf of Mexico and saw the mouth of a great river; 
others sailed along the Atlantic coast and made at least one 
attempt to settle on the James River; two traversed the con- 
tinent from Florida west to the Pacific. Coronado pushed 
north from Mexico through the Zuni pueblos to the plains of 
western Kansas and probably returned through Texas. De 
Soto, in the east, marched northward from the Gulf into 
Tennessee, and his men, burying him, a victim to the climate, 
returned along the Mississippi. The Spaniards had explored 
the continent from the Atlantic to the Pacific and from the 
Gulf as far north as the latitude of Virginia and Missouri 
and yet do not seem to have measured distances or plotted 
maps to scale or to have realized that a river as large as the 
Mississippi must drain a land of continental dimensions. 
Whatever they knew, they kept carefully to themselves and 
in 1600 the cartographers' knowledge of the interior was still 
of the vaguest. 

The reasons for this failure of the Spanish to colonize 
are not far to seek. The Spaniards came not to found homes 



SPANISH AND FRENCH FAILURES 13 

as the English did, but to hunt for gold, for the mysterious 
fountain of eternal youth, for the land where the Grand 
Khan, Prester John, Gog and Magog, and the mythical per- 
sonages described by Sir John Mandeville and other imagi- 
native medieval travelers dwelt in surpassing luxury and mag- 
nificence. They had read that there were rivers of diamonds, 
trees on which grew pearls and rubies, and a huge palace 
lighted by a single glorious carbuncle. The simple tale of 
Fray Marcos about his trip to the pueblos in Arizona was 
elaborated by breathless auditors into statements, greedily 
accepted, that he had seen a city as large as two Sevilles, 
where all the women wore great strings of golden beads, 
where all the men were silversmiths, and where the very 
lintels of the doors were studded with emeralds and rubies. 
Such cities the Spaniards had expected to find ; for such ex- 
peditions money and men were forthcoming. Their disap- 
pointment was great, for they found some adobe pueblos, into 
whose door-jambs had been pressed with a no more skilful 
instrument than the Indian's thumb, rough uncut topazes 
and garnets. The inhabitants were darkskinned men and 
women clad in dirty woolen blankets and wearing a few 
bracelets and anklets of rough-beaten gold and red copper. 
To the north, Coronado found only huge herds of ''hump- 
backed cows"; to the east, other explorers found the arid 
plains of Texas, and the swamps of Louisiana and Florida. 
They stood in the treasure house of the new world, in the 
Elysian Fields the race had so long sought, in the abode of 
wealth, liberty, and hope; and they knew it not. They 
sought the wealth of Inde and of the Grand Khan of China ; 
they were ready with Benedict to ** fetch you a toothpicker 
from the farthest inch of Asia; bring you the length of 
Prester John's foot; fetch you a hair off the Great Chan's 
beard; do you any embassy to the Pigmies"; but they were 
not ready to work. They turned to Mexico and Peru where 
the gold, silver, and precious stones they had come for were 
to be found. 

At the same time, the failure to colonize was not due merely 



14 THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 

to the aims of the men who came. The cutthroats and down- 
at-the-heel gentlemen of Europe, looking for sudden riches, 
were indeed far from good material for settlers, but they 
came to spots unsuitable for permanent colonies and they 
came utterly without preparation for settlement and indeed 
without even the faintest notion of what the mainland was 
like. The swamps and lowlands of the Gulf States, the hot 
fields of Texas are not favorable spots for white men to live 
in, and the population there is still sparse. Unfitted for 
permanent residence, the voyagers were not able to maintain 
themselves for any considerable time. A Spaniard clothed 
in leather jerkin, heavy cuirass, helmet, leather boots to his 
knees, and an arquebus weighing twenty pounds was not 
ready for a march through a Florida swamp on a torrid 
summer's day. The horses sank to their knees in the ooze 
and were burdens rather than aids to progress ; the insectivora 
swarmed; yellow fever, malaria, and dysentery carried off 
the unfortunate explorers at a rapid rate. Narv^z and his 
men, driven mad by disease, hunger, and the swamp pests, 
finally killed their horses, made boats out of the skins, em- 
barked on the Gulf and perished miserably trying to reach 
Mexico. 

In addition, the Spanish landed one and all among fierce 
and well-organized Indian tribes. The Zuni and Moqui 
pueblo confederacies in Arizona and New Mexico and the 
Creeks and Cherokees on the Gulf coast, though less ad- 
vanced than the Aztecs and Peruvians, were yet the strong- 
est bands on the Northern continent and extended their in- 
fluence to the north until it met that of the Iroquois in 
Pennsylvania and Illinois. None of them were civilized in 
any degree as we use the word. They were, in fact, in middle 
barbarism, two ethnical periods, of some thousands of years 
apiece, behind the European explorers in development. Not 
having attained the knowledge of smelting iron or the use 
of the alphabet, their warfare, agriculture, architecture, and 
domestic life were those of people who, for lack of hard im- 
plements, must be content with axes whose edges turned, with 



SPANISH AND FRENCH FAILURES 16 

plows and hoes of use only for scratching the surface, and 
with houses built of mud and wattle or of soft limestone. 
Their social organization too was most primitive : they traced 
property and descent through the mother instead of through 
the father, had no private ownership of property, no domestic 
animals save the dog. They were utterly unfit to cope per- 
manently with the white men, with whom they could not 
amalgamate and whom they could not in the long run suc- 
cessfully oppose ; but they were stalwart, entirely void of phys- 
ical fear and sufficiently well-organized to give the Spaniards 
infinite trouble in this first encounter. 

Nevertheless, with ordinary prudence and moderation the 
Spaniards might have fared well. They considered the In- 
dians, however, to be heretics fit only for slaves. Coronado's 
men snatched the blankets from the very backs of squaws and 
even of chiefs; De Soto outraged Indian notions of dignity 
by compelling chiefs to carry burdens. One and all the Span- 
iards scoffed at the Indians' worship and to all this they added 
treachery and cruelty. From greed, violence, and slave-catch- 
ing could come only one result. The Spaniards were attacked 
and ambushed, their water and food destroyed, their horses 
killed, their guns stolen. The Indians, who had been ready to 
find among the first Spaniards the white Messiah their legends 
told about, came to detest them with a deep and strenuous 
hatred. ^Moreover, coupled to the selfishness, greed, and in- 
subordination of the rank and file were the rivalry, jealousy, 
and treachery of the leaders. Indeed, the existence of such 
factors makes the failure of the Spaniards to influence the 
history of the United States seem not surprising, but inevit- 
able. 

' Nor was Spain the strong united nation needed to mother a 
sturdy race of colonists and protect their infancy. Her unity 
was seeming rather than real; her loyalty to the king ques- 
tionable ; the prevailing idea of her prosperity based upon the 
economic fallacy that the silver she began to get from Peru 
in such enormous sums was real wealth. From the dynastic 
visions of Charles V and Philip II came weakness, not 



16 THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 

strength. Throughout the century she was occupied either 
with war with France, or with subduing revolts in Germany, 
in the Netherlands, or in Spain itself. Her rulers had, in 
fact, neither energy, money, nor men to devote to the creation 
and development of a new Spain in the temperate regions of 
North America. 

The exploits of the French Huguenots in Florida and South 
Carolina and the work of French fur-traders and fishermen 
in the St. Lawrence region had also led by 1607 to no results 
of permanence. The same causes which made the Spanish 
settlement difficult, plus the enmity of the Spaniards them- 
selves, effectually crushed all the enterprises in the South, 
while the inclement winters of the North, and the difficulty 
of raising food in the brief summers caused the fur-traders 
and fishermen to erect only factories which they visited yearly. 
Along the Great Lakes, too, the French met the fierce and 
well-organized Iroquois, who effectually prevented them from 
playing a significant part in the history of the United States. 
The existence of the French colonies in the eighteenth century 
rather than the dramatic exploits of explorers in the seven- 
teenth is of importance in our national development. 

Thus it fell out that when the English queen issued a pat- 
ent of colonization in 1578 to Ealeigh and Gilbert, her notions 
of what she was granting were of the vaguest. Fairly ac- 
curate maps had been made and published showing the conti- 
nent and its main features of coast-line ; but side by side with 
these there flourished many maps representing all sorts of 
conceptions of the new land, and the men of the time had 
not yet proved to their own satisfaction which of these ideas 
was right. "Without actual experience, no one could tell be- 
yond a doubt which was valuable and which was worthless. 
The English appear to have believed that the Atlantic coast 
was in places only a couple of hundred miles wide, and that 
on the other side of this narrow strip was the China Sea 
and the cities Marco Polo had described. So naive too were 
their conceptions of natural forces that the first Virginia 
settlers were ordered by the English capitalists, who financed 



SPANISH AND FRENCH FAILURES 17 

the expedition, to sail up the rivers till they came to the spot 
where in a storm the waters of the China Sea washed over 
into the head waters of the James and the Potomac. Even 
after it became known that land and not water lay to the west, 
the expectations lingered of finding marvelous cities and, 
at the very least, a water-way to China. Champlain thought 
the La Chine rapids were all that blocked his path ; La Salle 
fully expected to sail down the Ohio into the Pacific, and, 
after being disappointed in this, long believed that the Mis- 
sissippi led thither; in fact, as late as the Revolution, the 
Rev. James Maury, made famous by the Parson's Cause, pre- 
dicted a glorious commercial future for Virginia because of 
the water-way through the Potomac, Ohio, and Missouri Rivers 
to the Pacific and the Chinese trade. Magellan had demon- 
strated the fact that a new world existed, but it remained for 
the French and English gradually to "discover" the confines 
of the present United States by living in it for nearly three 
centuries. 

No proper conception of the area and configuration of the 
continent was definitely attained and spread generally 
through the community until the days of Jefferson when 
Lewis and Clark returned from their long journey to the 
Pacific coast. The effective discovery of the present United 
States was, then, a long and difficult process, which was so 
far from begun when the first English colonists came here 
that the name Virginia, applied by the English at that time 
to the whole Atlantic coast, was still one to conjure up to the 
excited imaginations of adventurous men all sorts of won- 
drous possibilities. This ignorance of actual conditions and 
the resultant color it lent to glorious legends and fables was 
probably no less important a factor in producing English 
emigration than had been Columbus's misconceptions of geog- 
raphy in causing the discovery of the Western Hemisphere. 
Had either kno-^Ti precisely what they would find here, had 
either dreamt of what they would suffer here, neither would 
have come at all. 



Ill 

THE ENGLISH GENESIS OF THE UNITED STATES 

Of the many events that happened on this continent only 
those are a part of the history of the United States which 
vitally influenced the fortunes of the people who ratified 
the Constitution at the end of the eighteenth century, and 
who have since, by the friction and strife of a century's 
earnest endeavor, at last welded themselves into a nation, 
possessed of unity of language, laws, and ideals, and whose 
advanced corporate consciousness entitles it to the respect 
and admiration of the world. During the colonial period 
the elements of this nation were brought into a wilderness; 
the Revolution separated those elements from England and 
left them to forge themselves into a nation without Euro- 
pean interference ; the history of the country since 1789 is 
the story of fusing and welding discordant political and 
economic interests into unity. The Civil War completed the 
nation whose first elements came hither in the Susan Con- 
stant and the Mayflower. The genesis of the United States 
consists, then, of those things which made it possible for 
Englishmen to come to America; of those things which made 
them willing or anxious to come; and of those things which 
made it possible for them to stay. 

The present United States was made possible by the victory 
of the English fleet over the Spanish Armada at Gravelines 
in July 1588. The victory was itself the product of the 
genius of the English race for naval architecture and the 
legitimate result of the development of a new type of fighting 
ship that could sail as well as fight. The Channel pirates 
and the daring voyages of Hawkins and Drake to the Spanish 
Main gave the men of the English South Coast a knowledge 

18 



THE ENGLISH GENESIS OF THE UNITED STATES 19 

of seamanship, a reckless courage, and a contempt for Span- 
iards. But after all the fact that the English won by sheer 
efficiency and bravery was of less consequence in the history 
of the United States than the fact of the victory itself. The 
Spanish fleet was vanquished — England became mistress of 
the seas — and the new land to the west lay open to English 
enterprise. That one day's valiant work, far more than the 
voyages of Cabot, the reiterated claims of Mary and Elizabeth, 
and the patents of James, gave the English a right to the 
soil of the New World. The control of the ocean highway 
to America was the indispensable prerequisite of posses- 
sion. 

A great outburst of energy in the last years of the sixteenth 
century and the first of the seventeenth betokened the loosing 
of the pent-up strength stored away in England by the domes- 
tic peace and economic growth of the preceding century. 
Population and wealth had increased enormously. The fet- 
ters which decadent feudalism and the gild and open-field 
systems had placed upon agriculture and industry were 
stricken off. With the enclosing of fields and the turning of 
arable land into pasture for sheep came an improvement in 
the old wasteful methods of agriculture and stock-raising 
which doubled and trebled the output of the realm. The 
dissolution of the monasteries placed a vast property which 
had been hitherto administered merely for subsistence into 
the hands of men who utilized it for profit. ]\Ieans of ex- 
change increased ; the middleman appeared and the broker in 
grain; trading-companies, most significant for the develop- 
ment of the new world, and ready money seeking investment. 
The old economic fabric had given way before a new. The 
victory of the Armada seemed to be the occasion for suddenly 
displaying the great progress made since the Wars of the 
Roses. A taste for literature and the drama, fine clothes and 
houses, music and art began to invade the middle class. Not 
only the control of the sea but the energy and wealth stored 
away by the English nation during the sixteenth century 
made the colonization of America a possibility. Nor was it 



20 THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 

less important that the settlement of domestic and foreign 
quarrels allowed the subjects of James to spend money upon 
enterprises which would have been hazardous in the extreme 
in any previous ten decades. In 1606 the moment was indeed 
propitious for colonization. 

Out of the economic tangle of the sixteenth century came 
two varieties of men interesting to us: the capitalists with 
money to invest, or, as the phrase went, "to adventure," and 
the ''planters," the men anxious to try their fortunes in a 
new land. The rise of towns, the distribution of the mon- 
astic lands and of the huge estates which escheated to the 
Crown during or after the Wars of the Roses and which 
were mostly granted to gentlemen without titles, the new 
agriculture, the new manufacturing — all produced a new 
class of men with ready money. The prodigious success of the 
Muscovy, Levant, and East India Companies made this class 
willing to risk a great deal for the hope of large profits. The 
very same events had turned tenants from their fathers' 
fields ; had left monks homeless ; had deprived apprentices and 
journeymen of their own tasks, and had thus created a class 
of unemployed men whose vigor and ambitions were great. 
Then the vast amounts of silver poured from the mines of 
Peru had, by a sort of poetic justice, provided men with 
good reasons for emigration to the new continent whence the 
silver came. The value of money had declined, prices had 
risen in consequence and were in 1600, as a result of this and 
many contributory causes, two or three times what they had 
been in 1500. Every one whose income was derived from 
money payments lost, of course, a large proportion of their 
means of support, and many families turned out to make 
their own fortunes the younger sons they could no longer af- 
ford to maintain. Not only had the economic crisis made the 
English nation rich enough to undertake the colonization of 
America, not only did the political situation allow it thus to 
divert its energies, but the two had together produced the in- 
dividuals needed to occupy the new country. 

The great movements of the time had also worked to pre- 



THE ENGLISH GENESIS OF THE UNITED STATES 21 

pare individuals for migration to a new land where the pos- 
sibilities of economic and personal development were not 
cramped by relics of feudal law, the limitations of scholastic 
philosophy, or the creeds of Kome, The Renaissance had 
brought to the individual a sense of power utterly foreign to 
the medieval man and, as well, a new restlessness, a reckless 
curiosity, and a love of adventure for its own sake. The six- 
teenth century man was sure that knowledge was power ; that 
omniscience was possible; and that any man might attain it. 
His delight in physical existence, his confidence in his own 
ability, led him to look upon the unknown, and indeed the 
unknowable, as the only field "whereby a notable mind," in 
the words of George Beste, "might be made famous and 
fortunate. ' ' The greater the danger, the larger the risk ; the 
larger the compensation, the greater the glory. To those 
eager to obtain fame and wealth in the conquest of the phys- 
ical world, the Reformation added a number of admirable, 
pious men and women desirous of finding a place where there 
were no fetters upon freedom of speech and of worship, and 
where, in consequence, they might work out their own sal- 
vation in the way they believed God had directed, without 
interference from either those who thought them heretics or 
those who called them fools. And they sought not a place 
where every one should be free to think as he liked and do as 
he pleased, but a place where all men should agree upon 
fundamentals and whence all others could be expelled. The 
saving of their own souls, their own obedience to God's com- 
mands as to temporal and spiritual observance, were the 
reasons for their coming. The self-same arguments that 
drove William Bradford and John Winthrop from the Eng- 
lish Church led them to exile Roger Williams and the Quakers 
from Plymouth and Boston. 

Curiosity, the spirit of adventure, an eager search for the 
Northwest Passage to China led the first English explorers 
to American waters, but their reports of the possibilities of the 
land rather than their own experiences fired the minds of 
"adventurer" and "planter" alike. The returned navigators 



22 THE RISE OF THE AJklERICAN PEOPLE 

described the surpassing climate whose warmth raised ex- 
pectations of growing lemons and olives in Maine ! Wine 
could certainly be made in large quantities, they declared ; the 
silk worm would flourish; spices of all sorts either abounded 
or could be cultivated; gold was plentiful but would have to 
be mined. These samples of the saner predictions made were 
all proven true to the average mind by the enormous profits 
made from a cargo of sassafras bark brought back by Gosnold, 
That they knew much more about the country than we can 
prove they knew, is certain. Laudonniere and other Hugue- 
nots who escaped from Fort Caroline were in London as early 
as 1566 and lived with Raleigh and the Gilberts; three of 
Hawkins 's men who made their way across the continent from 
Mexico to Maine and were brought home by French fishermen 
were closeted with merchants and promoters. "Walsingham, 
the Secretary of State, Peckham, and others listened to what 
they had to say and studied carefully the records of Ver- 
razano's voyage along the Atlantic coast in 1524, of Cartier's 
voyage to the St. Lawrence ten years later, and no doubt 
many maps and narratives which are since lost. Gilbert even 
consulted the famous astrologer and alchemist, Dr. Dee, as 
to the possibilities of the new land, and, as Dee records in 
his diary, ''I, Mr. Awdrian Gilbert, and John Davis went by 
appointment to Mr. Secretary Beale his house where only we 
four were secret, and we made Mr. Secretary privy of the 
northwest passage." Nevertheless, despite the explorers and 
the writing in the stars, the limitations of their knowledge 
were astonishing. Gilbert, for instance, seems to have be- 
lieved the new country peopled by fauns ! 

Impelled by some such considerations as these, heartened 
by the tales of explorers, a body of merchants and gentlemen 
contributed a considerable sum of money, secured in 1606 the 
charter of a joint-stock company from the Crown, permitting 
them to exploit and settle the new Virginia, as the whole At- 
lantic coast was then called. After some delay, one hundred 
and twenty men sailed from the Thames in December 1606, 
in three ships furnished by the London part of the Virginia 



THE ENGLISH GENESIS OF THE UNITED STATES 23 

Company. Landing in May 1607, they began the first per- 
manent settlement in the present United States, at James- 
town, in the very sort of locality which the sensible instruc- 
tions they carried explicitly warned them against. They put 
up the first rough shacks on a little peninsula in the James 
River, near a strip of woods affording Indians an excellent 
cover for attack, and besides a pestilential bit of marsh and 
stagnant back-water. The "planters" too, for the most part 
adventurers and down-at-the-heel gentlemen anxious to make 
a fortune, all of them a thoroughly unpractical lot, had not 
come to work for a living but to become rich without work- 
ing. When, therefore, they found that pearls and nuggets 
of gold were not to be picked up on the banks of the James ; 
that the inhabitants had little worth stealing; and that the 
Virginia rivers did not lead to China, they sulked and shirked 
and became mutinous. The food began to get low; once 
rats broke into the granary; once fire consumed both houses 
and food. One year after the founding of Jamestown, only 
fifty-three out of one hundred and ninety-seven persons who 
had landed there were still alive, and the quarrels of the 
leaders, the hostility and thievery of the Indians, and the 
lack of food seemed certain to destroy the colony. The situ- 
ation seems to have been saved by the one man of sense 
on the ground, a professional soldier fresh from a romantic 
life as a free lance in Hungary and a galley slave in Con- 
stantinople, whom the capitalists in England had hired to 
accompany the expedition, Captain John Smith. He hanged 
the mutinous; pacified the Indians and bought corn from 
them; and forced the laggards to work by explaining that 
the Company's rules provided that all should share in com- 
mon both the food and the work, and that he who would not 
work should not eat. The Company in England, taught by 
experience, sent over artisans and laborers to replace the 
lazy, adventurous spirits who had succumbed to malaria and 
fever; and finally put in charge of the Colony in 1611 an- 
other professional soldier. Sir Thomas Dale, who governed 
the settlers by the military rules then in use in European 



24 THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 

armies and produced not only order and industry, but 
church-going and perhaps piety ! 

Meanwhile, in the North, the Plymouth branch of the Vir- 
ginia Company had explored the New England coast and 
had planted one colony in Maine, which stayed out the winter 
of 1607-8i and promptly returned in the spring with harrow- 
ing tales of the severity of the climate and the definite in- 
formation that lemons, olives, and the silk-worm did not 
flourish there. Scarcely a year followed, however, without 
bringing some voyager to the northern coasts, among them 
Captain John Smith, Samuel Argall from Virginia, Cham- 
plain from the St. Lawrence, and many Dutch traders from 
the tiny factories they began to establish about 1614 in the 
neighborhood of Long Island Sound. Permanent settlements 
there were none between the James and the St. Croix, but the 
whole coast was alive with fur-traders and fishermen during 
the long summers, a few of whom at times stayed out the 
winter, and all of whom were doing a valuable work in chart- 
ing the coast and in making known to Englishmen its pecu- 
liarities and resources. The shores of Massachusetts Bay 
were by no means an unknown region when the Mayflower 
with about one hundred souls on board came to anchor off 
Provincetown in December 1620. 

Thirty-five members of a congregation of Englishmen at 
Leyden had left Holland, not because they could not worship 
there as they wished, but because they found it hard to 
make a living, saw their children losing their English speech 
and habits, and feared that the renewal of the war with 
Spain might actually put their lives in danger. In the new 
country, they could not fare much worse, they argued, nor 
run much greater risks and would probably be, in the end, 
far freer and more comfortable. They had arranged with 
some London merchants to finance their expedition, in return 
for which they agreed to put the proceeds of their labors 
into a "common store" for seven years, at the expiration 
of which land should be assigned to each family and a pro- 
portional division made of the joint property of the mer- 



THE ENGLISH GENESIS OF THE UNITED STATES 25 

chants and the settlers. Some of their friends in England had 
been induced to join them and a good many laborers and 
craftsmen had been hired by the merchants to accompany 
them to work on the latter 's behalf. The little colony at 
Plymouth was by no means homogeneous, in character or in 
aims, and the strict religious life of the Pilgrims irked the 
laborers sent by the merchants. The common stock was a 
failure, as it had been at Jamestown, and, after some years 
of suffering and privation, as severe as that at Jamestown, 
though not by any means as fatal, Plymouth was sheltering 
a fairly prosperous band of about three hundred men and 
women. 

Soon after their arrival, the adjacent shores of Massachu- 
setts Bay were dotted with little villages of log huts, hous- 
ing such fur-traders and adventurers as Thomas Morton of 
Merrymount and Robert Gorges of Wessagusset ; a small band 
of men settled at Dorchester and another at Salem, all un- 
der grants from the Council for New England, to whom 
James I had delegated in 1620 the right to grant to colo- 
nists the land between the fortieth and forty-eighth parallels. 
Most of these settlements were soon absorbed into the Colony 
of ]\Iassachusetts Bay, founded by the arrival of the Great 
Emigi'ation at Boston in 1630 under John Winthrop and 
Thomas Dudley. In contrast to the fur-traders, who had 
money and servants but were not colonists, and to the Pil- 
grims, who possessed numbers but few worldly goods, the 
Puritans were well provided with both and came for the ex- 
press purpose of founding a new state in the wilderness on 
the model laid down in the Bible. Several of them had held 
positions of prominence in England, most of them had some 
property, and, with their retainers, furniture, and domestic 
animals, they soon established around Boston a number of 
small but thriving towns, whose population was constantly 
augmented by new arrivals from England. 

Indeed, so marked was the strength and wealth of the Bay 
Colony that its malcontents seceded and founded Providence, 
Rhode Island, the River Towns, New Haven, and New Hamp- 



26 THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 

shire, without hindering its own rapid growth. The settle- 
ment of New England was in a sense merely the expansion 
of Massachusetts. Meanwhile, Lord Baltimore had founded 
in Maryland a colony meant to be a refuge for Roman Cath- 
olics persecuted in England; the Swedes had set up factories 
along the Delaware; the Dutch had extended their trading- 
posts along the Hudson and Long Island Sound. By 1640, 
the whole Atlantic coast was fringed with colonists all of 
whom had arrived in a single generation, the great bulk of 
whom had come within the single decade, 1630-1640, to a 
land on which it had hardly seemed possible in 1588 that 
an English colony would ever exist. 

The explanation of this rapid growth and of the perma- 
nence of the English colonies is to be found partly in the 
extremely advantageous character of the land for the pur- 
poses of settlement. The soil was fertile, the climate tem- 
perate, the rainfall varied and dependable, making possible 
a great variety of crops and in particular allowing the pro- 
duction of all the staples to which the colonists had been 
accustomed in Europe. The change in their mode of life was 
not, therefore, too violent, as had been the case with the 
Spanish and the French. The numerous rivers were so many 
highways opening the country for miles inland to exploita- 
tion at a time when the making of roads would have opposed 
insuperable obstacles to its exploration and settlement. The 
influence of the land upon the people who came was good. 
It attracted serious, hard-working men and women, looking 
for homes, whose energy and resourcefulness were developed 
by life in a climate too cold to make existence easy. From 
the elements that had fatally distracted the attention of the 
Spaniards — precious metals and luxuriant vegetation — it was 
entirely free, and forced the colonists to develop profitable 
industries by their own labor. The treasure-seekers, the 
merely adventurous, the lazy, the stupid were soon eliminated 
and the population w^ recruited only from the more desir- 
able European emigrants. 

Nor was it without a deep thankfulness and sense of its 



THE ENGLISH GENESIS OP THE UNITED STATES 27 

significance that Winthrop wrote, "God hath cleared our 
title." Perhaps the character of the land, perhaps chance, 
had made the coast Indians weak, and they had been further 
decimated by pestilence just before the English settlers ap- 
peared at Jamestown and at Plymouth. In addition, num- 
bers were swept off by strong drink which acted upon their 
unaccustomed frames like virulent poison, and by the measles 
and smallpox which they caught from the whites and which 
raged as epidemic fevers, deadly as the plague. "While it is 
not probable that the English were influenced solely by a 
desire to insure the Indians' welfare, the fact remains that 
one and all they treated them with courtesy and did not 
rouse their antagonism. Henry Hudson, in particular, so 
entertained the chiefs along the Hudson in 1609 when he 
explored that river, that the Iroquois were ever after firm 
friends of the English. No doubt the attack upon them by 
Champlain on the Richelieu River that same year and the 
prodigious fright they received from the firing of his blun- 
derbuss contributed to the general result. In time, how- 
ever, as the coast Indians learned that settlement by the 
English meant not only fire-water, guns, iron hatchets, and 
kettles so superior in operation to their own crude tools 
that life became a pleasure, but the loss of their land and the 
destruction of the game, hostility developed apace and gave 
rise to sporadic outbreaks which were with one or two ex- 
ceptions crushed by the colonists without great difficulty. On 
the whole, it is true, that only in the first years of the century 
were the Indians a menace to the existence of the English 
settlements. 

Nevertheless, had it not been for the founding of Massa- 
chusetts Bay and the presence around Boston of thousands, 
where at Plymouth and Jamestown were only hundreds, the 
fate of the United States might have been different. Massa- 
chusetts was a tower of strength to the people of New Haven 
and the River Towns in their resistance to the encroach- 
ments of the Dutch. The little collection of huts inside 
the rough palisade at New Amsterdam was rather a trading- 



28 THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 

post than a permanent settlement, for its population were 
Indian traders, sailors, and the cosmopolitan crew which had 
haunted the New England coast until dislodged by the set- 
tlers who had not scrupled to eject them bag and baggage 
as undesirable tenants. From Holland w^ere sent out by the 
Dutch West India Company "governors" whose duty it was 
to control the fur-trade and make money for the Company. 
Yet weak as New Amsterdam was, had it not been for the 
existence of Massachusetts, the attempts of Kieft and Stuy- 
vesant to get control of the Connecticut River valley might 
have been successful, more settlers might have come, and 
the English conquest of 1665 might have added to the other 
elements already in America a really considerable amount 
of Dutch blood and tradition. To the south, the Swedes 
succumbed to the Dutch. Thus, little more than half a cen- 
tury after the first English settlers arrived, about eighty 
thousand people were scattered along the coast from Maine to 
North Carolina, all of whom recognized the English King 
and the English law and the vast majority of whom had 
come from England itself. 

The most vital fact, however, explaining the permanence of 
English possession is found in the existence of maize, an 
indigenous and nutritious food-plant, which could be culti- 
vated successfully where the European foodstuffs could not 
be grown. Wheat, barley, rye, or oats needed a cleared field, 
deep ploughing, and constant labor. A hole made with a 
sharp stick in the open fields or in any forest clearing, a 
bit of fish dropped in and covered with a little dirt knocked 
in with the foot, a few kernels of maize covered in a similarly 
primitive manner and the whole process of agriculture was 
finished. Neither the Jamestown nor Plymouth colonists nor 
many and many a trader would have lived to tell the tale 
but for this maize which they could raise or buy from the 
Indians. At first serious discussions, which amuse us, took 
place over the edibility of shell fish, turkeys, and blueberries, 
and grave doubts were felt about the safety of drinking 
the water, instead of the "small-beer" to which they had 



THE ENGLISH GENESIS OF THE UNITED STATES 29 

been accustomed in England. These doubts were vanquished 
by a little experience induced by necessity, and it is hardly 
an exaggeration to say that the great majority of the colo- 
nists supported life even during the first half century largely 
from indigenous food-products. 

But America would never have counted many inhabitants 
had it not provided them with a profitable return for their 
labor in the shape of commodities which could be sent to 
England in exchange for the clothes, shoes, books, and lux- 
uries to which they had been accustomed. The market was 
soon overstocked with sassafras, but tobacco furnished the 
Southern colonies a marketable staple whose importance in 
the upbuilding of the United States cannot be exaggerated. 
The simplicity of its cultivation, the possibility of employing 
unskilled labor, the simple method of curing it discovered 
about 1616 by Rolfe, made it the decisive influence in en- 
suring the growth of the young colony on the James. By 
this time, it was well known in England that olives, wine, 
and silk were as legendary as gold and pearls, and expect- 
ant colonists for New England needed to be assured of the 
presence of some tangible asset. The cod, whose dense 
schools stopping the progress of ships had attracted Breton 
and Portuguese fishermen as early perhaps as 1450, now 
became a staple of the thriving trade of Boston and Plymouth, 
where the pious Bradford and his lieutenant, John Alden, 
developed an amazing commercial sagacity for men who had 
renounced worldly aims. Along the New England coast the 
supply of fur-bearing animals was soon too much reduced 
to make the trade profitable, but New Amsterdam and Fort 
Orange (Albany) rivaled Tadousac, Quebec, and Montreal 
as fur centers. The Hudson and Mohawk tapped the 
home land of the great Iroquois tribes and were the natural 
outlet for their spoils of the chase. By all these varied 
factors, the advantages of the site, the absence of powerful 
Indian occupants, the value of maize, tobacco, fish, and furs, 
the permanence of the English colonies in America was as- 
sured as early as 1640. The preponderance of the English 



30 THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 

over all other elements of the population made it clear 
that they would mold the destinies of the growing nation 
and absorb foreign elements rather than be themselves 
absorbed. 



IV 

THE ECONOMIC GROWTH OF THE COLONIES 

In 1665, the whole Atlantic coast passed finally into English 
control; in 1776, the coast colonies declared themselves in- 
dependent of England. The chief task for the historian of 
colonial history is the explanation of this latter fact — the 
most important single fact in our annals — the depicting of 
the forces which enabled us to deserve and to win our in- 
dependence. The fundamental cause of the Revolution lies 
in the rapid economic growth of the colonies which made 
them in 1775 strong enough and wealthy enough to stand 
alone. Independence was necessarily an accomplished fact 
which no fiat could create and which was in 1776 a condition 
resulting from the operation of forces in the decades just 
past. The Revolution by no means created thirteen States; 
it declared the already accomplished fact that those thirteen 
States were independent entities, distinct from England in 
ideals and interests, strong enough to maintain themselves 
against the rest of the world, experienced in self-government, 
and imbued with the spirit of liberty. The premise of the 
Revolution is the preceding century of colonial history, and, 
unless we study that century of growth from the point of 
view of its most significant result, we shall be closing our 
eyes to some of the most vital facts in our history. These 
are the extent and character of the economic growth which 
made us strong enough to resist; the system of self-govern- 
ment which had enabled us to manage our own affairs so 
long without assistance that the severing of the political and 
constitutional ties with England was accomplished literally 
by writing a few words on paper declarative of the exist- 

31 



32 THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 

ing facts; and the relations of the colonies to the mother- 
country out of which grew those tangible constitutional and 
political issues which roused so great an antagonism on 
either side of the ocean as to result in actual warfare. The 
growth of the colonies, the rise of American democracy, 
States' sovereignty, these are the chief topics of colonial his- 
tory between 1665 when the Atlantic coast became English 
and 1776 when the colonies declared themselves independent. 
The most important fact about the growth of the thirteen 
colonies is its extent. Within three generations, a few scat- 
tered groups of people had grown by natural accretion and 
by immigration into the elements of a nation. When the 
Susan Constant anchored in the James River in 1607, a few 
hundred fur-traders and fishermen were in the habit of 
spending the summers on the Atlantic coast; by 1640, the 
English settlers already numbered thousands, nearly 16,000 
of whom were in the Bay Colony alone; and by 1660, about 
80,000 souls were building homes in the new continent. 
Within a century, the number of colonies had doubled, and 
the population, as nearly as it can now be estimated, was 
twenty times as large as in 1660, having reached the astound- 
ing figure of 1,600,000. Clearly, if this development be any 
criterion, the period preceding the Eevolution was not one of 
acute suffering and distress. And the Revolution itself only 
stimulated the resort of people thither, for thirty years later 
the first census of the United States claimed a total popu- 
lation of 4,000,000. Here, in fact, lies the fundamental cause 
of the Revolution: a century of growth had made the col- 
onies strong enough and wealthy enough to stand alone. 
Of this the leaders were thoroughly aware. As the Decla- 
ration of Causes of July 4, 1775, finely and truly said: "We 
gratefully acknowledge as signal instances of the divine favor 
towards us that His Providence would not permit us to be 
called into this severe controversy, until we were grown up to 
our present strength, had been previously exercised in warlike 
operations, and possessed of the means of defending our- 
selves. ' ' 



THE ECONOMIC GROWTH OF THE COLONIES 33 

The story of this most significant growth, however, does 
not describe the settling of thirteen colonies which normally 
developed by the increase of population and interchange 
of ideas into the thirteen States of the Revolutionary epoch. 
It tells of a scarcely broken stream of new emigrants from 
Europe, with varied customs, ideals, and traditions; of a 
constant and vital transformation decade after decade of 
every aspect of colonial life. The colonies in 1760 were not 
only collectively and individually bigger and richer; they 
were individually totally dissimilar in population, in govern- 
ment, in ideals from the tiny communities extant in 1660. 
The first settlers, indeed, far from giving final form or even 
definitive direction to the various States, in most cases merely 
began the formal existence of that particular political entity, 
which, after a century and more of transformation and 
astonishing growth, ultimately became one of the States which 
declared themselves sovereign in 1776. To suppose that the 
IMassachusetts of 1640, the New York of 1689, the Pennsyl- 
vania of 1700 was in anything more than a technical political 
and constitutional sense the father of the State of 1776 is 
to lose sight of the most significant fact in colonial history, 
to forget tlie growth which made the Revolution possible. 
In addition, it indicates our failure to remember that the 
difference in development during that century of those who 
came to America and those who remained in England was 
perhaps the main cause of that disagreement out of which 
the Revolution ostensibly grew. The very extent of the trans- 
formation is a cardinal point to stress. In 1760, the thirteen 
colonies were not English; they were already American. 

While there is always danger of exaggerating the extent 
of the change and of thus seeming to forget that fundamental 
qualities of the people and basic notions of government can 
be directly traced to the influence of the first settlers, it is 
nevertheless only necessary to remind the reader that dan- 
cing, card-playing, and theater-going were common amuse- 
ments in Revolutionary Boston to show him how great a 
change had taken place since the strict days of John Cotton. 



34 THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN" PEOPLE 

Indeed, Harvard College, founded as a bulwark of the the- 
ology dominant in 1640, had by 1700 already become the 
home of liberal thought to the utter dismay of the orthodox, 
and the leaven had so spread in the community that even 
the Great Awakening of 1745 was wholly insufficient to stifle 
the theological dissent from the older Calvinism. In Penn- 
sylvania, a militia, courts, a hierarchy of judicial officials, 
and a police force in Philadelphia bore eloquent testimony to 
the extent of the departure from the ideals of Penn. 

The very elements of the future nation, much less the 
nation itself, were not on this continent in 1660. Six of 
the thirteen colonies, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, 
the Carolinas, and Georgia, came into existence after the 
Restoration.^ To the Pilgrims, Puritans, and Cavaliers were 
added other elements of which several outnumbered the 
original English settlers. There were probably more Quak- 
ers around Philadelphia in 1690, and more Germans in New 
York and Pennsylvania in 1715, than there were English on 
the whole continent in 1634. The Salzburgers, the Palatines, 
the Huguenots, the Scotch-Irish from Ulster, the Portuguese 
Jews were racially and religiously dissimilar from the Pil- 
grims and Puritans and brought (except the Scotch-Irish) 
totally different languages, political traditions, and social cus- 
toms whose marks are still as distinct in the districts where 
they settled as the impress of the Puritans upon Massa- 
chusetts. Most of these dissimilar elements settled along the 
coast after 1700 and no small proportion came after 1740. 
The growth which the colonies had attained by 1760 was 
due less to the normal increase of those already here in 1660 
than to direct immigration from Europe. 

The character of the individuals who came was also vastly 
different. With the Pilgrims had come many laborers sent 
over by the merchants who financed their expedition; Win- 
throp and his partners had also paid the passage of many 

1 New York, of course, belonged to Holland before 1660, and the 
abortive settlements of the Swedes along the Delaware seem scarcely 
worth reckoning. 



THE ECONOMIC GROWTH OF THE COLONIES 35 

artisans and farm-hands, and the settlers alive in Virginia 
were largely descendants of men and women induced to come 
by the Virginia Company's promises or payments. Still, the 
proportion of the well-to-do who paid their own transporta- 
tion and came to the new country with seeds, cattle, tools, 
and ready money was much greater before 1660 than it was 
after that date. By 1700, the first extravagant expectations 
of great wealth and wine-growing had long been definitely 
abandoned ; the Seven Cities of Cibola had been transplanted 
to inaccessible spots in the interior, and navigators had found 
the Northwest Passage unpleasantly elusive; the Atlantic 
coast was rapidly being stripped of fur-bearing animals and 
the new Hudson Bay Company had monopolized the trade 
with northern Canada. The possibilities of abnormal profits 
in trade with the new continent had disappeared, and the 
capitalists who had financed colonies w^ere disappointed with 
the small returns and declined to "adventure" more money. 
The emigrants were with every decade more and more 
recruited from those driven from Europe by their individual 
poverty. ]\Iany came as "indented" servants, who in return 
for passage allowed the ship-captain to auction them off to the 
highest bidder, binding themselves to serve him for five or 
seven years. ]\Iost of the labor in the tobacco fields of the 
Chesapeake colonies and in the grain fields of Pennsylvania 
and New Jersey was of this type. At the end of the term 
of service, the colony gave him land and his late master 
furnished him with clothes, seeds and tools. He began life 
anew; the social stigma hitherto attached to him soon dis- 
appeared and he became a full-fledged citizen. ]\Iany polit- 
ical prisoners of excellent and desirable stock were shipped 
over by Cromwell and by James II, and the English govern- 
ment also attempted to mitigate the severity of the criminal 
code by giving those condemned to death or to long terms 
of imprisonment the option of transportation to the colonies. 
More of these were sent to the Barbadoes and the West 
Indian sugar colonies than to the continent; those guilty of 
the petty offences then punishable by hanging were hardly 



36 THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 

what we should call criminals; but these unfortunates as well 
as the indented servants and political prisoners were very 
different material for a new nation from the stern, capable, 
educated men and women who followed Winthrop and Brad- 
ford, Hooker and Davenport, Calvert and Penn. In addition, 
many and many a cosmopolitan adventurer of the type of 
Morton of Merry mount, many a smuggler and illicit fur- 
trader, who fretted at the restrictions of society, came to the 
new land and formed with kindred spirits, at first along the 
coast and later in the interior, numerous settlements whose 
business, good and bad, was in volume out of all proportion 
to their size. These were "the stumbling blocks" in New 
England's Canaan, the tares sprung up among the wheat. 
But these dare-devil, careless frontiersmen formed an im- 
portant element among the new people and in actual numbers 
'^cannot have been negligible; we must not forget that they 
too left descendants. In fact, it was their spirit rather than 
that of Puritan and Cavalier that became the dominant note 
of American life in the days of Jackson. 

These emigrants to the new world, however their object in 
coming changed from time to time, were, in 1760 as in the 
beginning, a sturdy race of enthusiastic, resourceful radicals. 
Otherwise they had not come. Whatever the motive which 
led them to America — the difference of creed, the desire ta 
invest capital, the lack of opportunity to make a living at 
home, ambition, adventure, restlessness — it was invariably 
their discontent with what existed, and their faith in their 
own ability to better their fortunes which led the emigrants 
thither. The result was striking. Gradually the popidation 
of Europe was sifted, as Stoughton said, that "We might 
plant choice grain in the wilderness." Gradually as the 
more venturesome were drawn into the colonies, the more 
conservative were left at home. Those whose hatred of the 
pressure of creed, of social convention, or poverty, had been 
sufficient to drive across three thousand miles of ocean into 
an unknown wilderness were not likely to rear there de- 
scendants who would brook much interference. The children 



THE ECONOMIC GROWTH OF THE COLONIES 37 

of such men, in the Governor of Pennsylvania's vivid phrase, 
"rode restive." They preferred the possible dangers of 
change to the continuance of slight grievances. Their cousins 
in England were normally of the opposite mind. They were 
the descendants of the men who had preferred to endure 
what they knew rather than face perils yet unknown, — those 
too contented at home or too lacking in initiative to leave. 
A century and a half of emigration had cast the characters 
of the two sections of the Anglo-Saxon race in different 
molds. It had created in Americans a spirit, a temper of 
different metal from that which the stirring events of the 
same period had produced in the mother-country. The very 
growth itself furnished the possibility and almost the cer- 
tainty of a fundamental disagreement between the colonies 
and England. 

Despite its rapidity this gro\vi;h in population had not / 
resulted by 1760 in a fringe of continuous settlement from 
Maine to Georgia, but had produced rather a collection of 
little communities dotted along the coast, reaching in places 
a hundred miles inland, all effectually separated from each 
other by days of traveling by water or land.^ A week spent 
between Boston and Newport, between Providence and New 
York, or between New York and Philadelphia was by no means 
an uncommon experience of travelers on horseback unin- 
cumbered by heavy baggage; and the various little com- 
munities were in point of fact in far more constant com- 
munication with London and the West Indies than with each 
other. Indeed, even in New England the settlement was very 
sparse; the acreage of primeval forest still great; the roads 
poor or non-existent. Connecticut was composed in 1760 of 
three or four little groups of towns widely separated; New 
York of a little cluster around the city, another around Al- 
bany and a third up the Mohawk, with a few scattered farmg 
along the rivers. Pennsylvania strung out along the banks 
of the Delaware and its tributaries, or pushed down the fer- 

1 See the notably careful and accurate map in Channing's History of 
the United States, I, 510. 



38 THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 

tile valleys of the Blue Ridge. There was in 1760, and in- 
deed in 1790, no geographical or economic basis for a single 
nation or a single government. Nor did these scattered 
groups, already acutely conscious of their political identity, 
possess any economic interest in common or any economic 
bond of a positive character. They had grown strong as 
thirteen units, not as a whole; and, though they soon came 
to realize that some sort of cooperation would be necessary to 
secure that freedom from English interference they coveted, 
they desired freedom individually, not collectively. 

The only economic conditions common to them all were 
negative in character: the lack of a medium of direct ex- 
change with Europe and their common dependence upon the 
West India trade. 

The three thousand miles of ocean separating America from 
Europe and the proximity of the continent to the "West Indies 
are two of the most obvious and cardinal facts in American 
history. With them are vitally connected in some fashion 
nearly every economic and governmental issue in our his- 
tory — not only colonial trade and development, but the Revo- 
lution, the Jay Treaty, Louisiana, the War of 1812, the Tariff, 
the Monroe Doctrine, and much more. 

Except for Virginia's tobacco and South Carolina's indigo 
(cotton was not grown for export till after the Revolution), 
the colonial products were too bulky for export and were in 
addition not sufficiently salable in Europe to make it worth 
while to pay the freight thither. At the same time the very 
general lack of manufactures in the colonies^ left them de- 
pendent upon Europe for nearly everything which the mem- 
bers of the household could not produce with their own hands. 
A little iron, some glass and cutlery were made in America, 
but not enough in quantity to supply even local demand. 
Pins, nails, thread, stationery, tape, knives, and the like, as 

2 "The genius of the people in these colonies is as little turned to 
manufacturing goods for their own use as is possible to suppose in any 
people whatsoever." Stephen Hopkins, Rights of the Colonies Exam- 
ined, 13. (1765.) 



THE ECONOMIC GROWTH OF THE COLONIES 39 

well as French millinery and English broadcloth, were regu- 
larly imported by American merchants. For all this, they 
must paj', and, with little currency in the colonies and that 
so debased that the English would not accept it at face value, 
with no commodities in most colonies which the English 
wished in exchange, the merchants were forced to undertake 
a round of regular trading ventures in order to pay their 
European bills.^ 

The West India colonies, owned by England, France, Hol- 
land, and Spain, were producing great amounts of sugar, 
then scarce and correspondingly expensive in Europe, and 
were therefore making huge returns to the owners of plan- 
tations. The planters preferred to buy food and necessities 
from the continental colonists rather than divert the labor 
needed to produce them from the infinitely more lucrative 
work of cane cultivation. The colonists were equally glad to 
find so near at hand a market in which to exchange what 
they raised for the sugar, molasses, and rum so highly valued 
in Europe. The ordinary method of exchange between Bos- 
ton and England was therefore via the West Indies, The 
New England ship loaded at Boston with salt fish for the 
slaves' food on the sugar plantations, mth staves for the 
barrels and hogsheads in which the sugar and molasses were 
to be shipped, with boards, window frames, and all the various 
pieces needed for constructing the planter's house. At St. 
Christopher, she would load with sugar and molasses, pro- 
ceed to London, load with manufactured goods, and so re- 
turn to Boston, clearing ordinary between fifty and one hun- 
dred per cent profit. We know of a captain who made 

3 The difficulty of making remittances to England at all, even by 
means of a round of trading voyages, is admirably illustrated by the 
correspondence between William Penn and his American agent, James 
Logan. "If thou canst not get silver ... by the Madeiras directly 
thither, as well as by Barbadoes with Madeira wine, send as fast as 
thou canst turn our cheap corn, flour, and bread into wine, and some 
wine into sugar, home for supply." Penn to Logan, 1704. Penn and 
Loffan Correspondence, I, 340. (Pennsylvania Historical Society, Me- 
moirs, IX.) ^ 



40 THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 

eight hundred per cent profit off a cargo of salt taken into 
Baltimore, and we find merchants considering themselves de- 
frauded if the net profits of the carrying trade fell below 
one hundred per cent. Even if such cases were not as com- 
mon as the evidence seems to indicate, there can be no doubt 
that the legitimate profits from this triangular trade were very- 
large. 

Another triangular trade, of which the "West Indies were 
a significant factor, was far more lucrative and hence even 
more popular in New England. A ship-load of inferior 
molasses converted into Medford rum in the numerous dis- 
tilleries in Massachusetts and Rhode Island would purchase 
from the sodden chiefs of the West African Coast a crowded 
ship-load of "black ivory," whose value in the West Indian 
sugar plantations or the Virginian tobacco fields transcended 
many times the costs of the enterprise. Rum, molasses, and 
slaves became the solid basis of many a colonial fortune and 
there can be no doubt that men and women, who believed 
themselves even more attentive to the calls of conscience than 
their descendants who are prompt to censure this nefarious 
traffic, saw in it absolutely nothing objectionable. This at- 
titude toward slavery and the slave-trade in the eighteenth 
century needs to be most carefully borne in mind by those 
who undertake to assign the moral responsibility for negro 
slavery in the South in 1860. It is also incontestable that 
the Massachusetts men who engaged in this traffic were not 
one whit different from those sterner men who wrote in the 
Body of Liberties in 1641, "There shall never be any bond 
slaverie villinage or Captivitie amongst us, unless it be law- 
full Captives taken in just warres, and such strangers as 
willingly sell themselves or are sold to us." 

The significance and importance of the existence of the 
West India Islands in the colonial and revolutionary periods 
can scarcely be exaggerated. So great were the profits, so 
completely did any commerce whatever rest upon one or the 
other triangular trade, that by 1760 the colonists had come 
to Defoe's conclusion, that without that trade they would 



i 



THE ECONOMIC GROWTH OF THE COLONIES 41 

perish.* To their minds, the results from it in the cases of 
individuals and of communities alike were so tangible and 
convincing that they had almost ceased to believe that any 
other forces had been behind the exhilarating growth of the 
past decades. 

The number of ships clearing from New York had in- 
creased from 64 in 1717 to 477 in 1762 ; the exports to Eng- 
land which had been according to a seemingly trustworthy 
source £18,000 in 1701 were in 1767, £61,000; and the imports 
into New York from England, which were of course the 
direct fruits of the West India trade, had risen from £31,910 
in 1701 to the enormous figure of £417,957 in 1767. A glance 
at such a balance-sheet as this made clear to colonial mer- 
chants how great a demand for English goods existed in the 
colonies, and how utterly incapable they were of carrying on 
any direct trade with the mother-country. Indeed, they 
knew well enough that the English cared little for their ex- 
ports; but would be panic-stricken at the idea of losing a 
market for English goods of which the total imports were 
annually well into the millions of pounds. Above all, they 
were afraid of losing so convenient a method of receiving the 
West India products at their own doors and of there selling 
their own manufactures, a trade from which they derived 
great profit and in which the colonial shippers shouldered the 
risks of loss or capture at sea. 

That the Navigation Acts were intended to confine this 
lucrative trade to English and colonial ships, and were meant, 

4 "Tlie very Being and Subsistence of New England in matters of 
Trade consists in and depends wholly upon their Union with and Sub- 
jection to Great Britain, as the Growth [i. e., products] of their Coun- 
try, which is tlie only Article that supports their Commerce, is taken 
off by the British Colonies only. . . . Without this Export those Col- 
onies would perish. It is true, the Islands [in the West Indies] would 
starve for want of provisions too, at least at first; but on the Conti- 
nent, if the Islands did not take off their Product, their Lands which, 
they have been at a vast Expense to cure and clear and plant would 
lie useless and uncultivated. . . . Their Plantations would produce more 
of everything than their mouths could devour or than they could find 
markets to vend them at." Daniel Defoe, A Plan of English Commerce. 



42 THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 

as well, to handicap the foreign sugar islands by compelling 
them to provide themselves with the food, lumber, and live- 
stock which the English tropical colonies obtained from the 
continent, this, too, they well understood. Nor, while the 
continental colonies were weak and the surplus available for 
export was small, were the Navigation Acts needed to pre- 
vent the colonists from seeking a market elsewhere. The 
logic of the situation and the obvious advantages which 
colonial ships possessed for carrying the sugar and tobacco 
to England were sufficient to prevent any very considerable 
breach of the spirit of the acts, however zealously the colonial 
captains labored to evade paying the customs dues. 

But as the eighteenth century progressed, the productive 
capacity of the colonies grew proportionately faster than did 
the needs of the English "West India colonies. Probably not 
later than 1700, the English West India markets were over- 
stocked with colonial goods at times when the French, Dutch, 
and Spanish islands were ready to pay high prices for the 
same commodities. Inevitably, the colonial captains threw 
the statutes to the winds and sought the better market. The 
easy sale and the large profits, the willingness of officials 
and ship-masters to overlook statutes and regulations, and 
the lack of any coercive force to compel obedience resulted 
promptly in the development of a brisk and regular smug- 
gling trade between the foreign sugar islands and the colonial 
merchants. Fraudulent clearance papers, and the posses- 
sion of several sets of false certificates by most ship-captains 
lent a specious legality to these practices, and colonial ships 
were soon doing business with Hamburg and Middleburg as 
well as London. The illicit business grew indeed at such 
a rate that by the time of the Kevolution apparently trust- 
worthy authorities stated the volume of trade between Ham- 
burg, Holland, and New York at a quarter of a million 
pounds.^ While such statistics are probably inaccurate, 
there can be no doubt that the direct trade with Europe was 

5 H. B. Dawson, Hew 'York City During the Revolution, 38, and the 
statistics and authorities there quoted. 



THE ECONOMIC GROWTH OF THE COLONIES 43 

very large and that these figures represent the belief of 
both English and colonial merchants as to its extent and 
value. To the colonist, it was the sum of which the English 
government meant to rob him in order to put it into the 
pockets of Englishmen; to the London merchants, it repre- 
sented the sum of which they had already been robbed. 

This economic interest, however, was not in any sense of 
the word national, nor did it constitute any positive bond of 
union between the colonies. In fact, individuals and not 
entities were affected; and not by any means all individuals. 
The growth of wealth, like that of population, had not been 
evenly spread throughout the colonies or even throughout 
any single colony. Those towns which lay even a short dis- 
tance from the sea or from some river remained, like Brain- 
tree, Massachusetts, nearly static in population and wealth, 
dependent largely for what they possessed on the work of 
their own people. Vast and noticeable as was the increase 
in general wealth, individual merchants and planters, indi- 
vidual towns, and even colonies possessed more than a pro- 
portionate share. The handsome mansions around Boston 
and along the Chesapeake, the imported clothes and conven- 
iences of certain individuals soon marked them as a class 
apart from the rest in the city or town. With ready money 
to lend, with goods to sell, with positions to fill, they soon 
became the creditors of many in the same community who 
were not so well off. The rich were, in sooth, not as wealthy, 
nor the poor as destitute as those classes in Europe; the 
actual distance between them was slight, but it was unmis- 
takably there, and must never be forgotten by one who hopes 
to understand the history of the Revolution. The merchant 
was the onlj^ purchaser of colonial produce, and the only 
importer of the coveted English goods. His profits as mid- 
dleman, then as now, were grudgingly paid, and the fact 
forgotten that the great profits on a successful voyage were 
balanced by equally heavy losses when a cargo of grain 
spoiled, the ship was wrecked, or was captured by pirates or 
privateers. Unquestionably, there had grown up in the 



44 THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 

colonies a hatred of the creditor class by the debtor class. 
Similarly, the inland towns and hamlets, the "frontier," 
were usually heavily in debt to the coast towns for salt, seeds, 
tools, and numerous commodities they had grown accustomed 
to but could not make. So we find a distinct feeling of hos- 
tility nourished by the farmers in the Berkshires against the 
Boston merchants; by the farmers in the Blue Ridge against 
the coast towns in Pennsylvania and Virginia; and the be- 
ginning of the present antipathy between the counties and 
the city of New York. In these "debtor" districts, really 
primitive conditions existed, and the people, shivering in 
homespun around the great fire in the log cabins, supposed 
that the merchants and planters must be extremely comfort- 
able, clad in broadcloth and ensconced in a plastered house, 
decorated with the expensive "china paper." That the lat- 
ter were also exceedingly uncomfortable, the farmers did not 
know and would not have believed had they been told. The 
creation of these great creditor and debtor classes was one 
of the chief results of the character of colonial growth. 
Their existence is one of the cardinal facts needed for a com- 
prehension of the Revolution ; for that war was fought quite 
as much between two parties in America as between England 
and the colonies, and the Loyalist and Patriot parties coin- 
cided far more closely with the lines of creditor and debtor 
than has generally been supposed. The Civil War was not 
over in 1781 ; it continued during the Critical Period ; the 
adoption of the Constitution marked the victory of the credi- 
tor party, which was promptly crushed in 1800 by the debtors 
enrolled as Anti-Federalists. Indeed, the fact that the East 
has been normally the creditor of the West has been one of 
the fundamental facts in our history and is the explanation 
of most of our economic phenomena. Colonial growth not 
only provided economic interests sufficiently powerful to 
cause the breach with England, but it resulted in the crea- 
tion of the two economic interests which have been dominant 
in this country ever since, those of the settled country and 
of the frontier. 



THE ORIGIN OF AMERICAN DEMOCRACY 

Providentially, the English settlers began their new life so 
far from home that active assistance or interference from 
England in local government was out of the question. 
American democracy originated in necessity: the settlers 
did their own work because there was no one else who could 
by any possibility do it. By 1775, they had governed them- 
selves so long in every particular and with such complete 
success that the breach with England caused and involved 
absolutely no administrative difficulties or changes. The 
fact that the colonists had governed themselves was conclu- 
sive proof that they were not dependent upon the mother- 
country, that merely formal and superficial obstacles stood 
in the way of complete independence. In this we find a 
second fundamental cause of the Revolution, scarcely less 
significant than the economic strength of America. 

The width of the Atlantic Ocean, the fact that a very few 
thousand people were scattered in tiny groups over a thou- 
sand miles of sea-coast, the absolute lack of kings, feudal 
barons, or administrative organs of any sort created by past 
generations to perform the community's work for it, — these 
were the primary causes of the origin of American democ- 
racy. Nor need we look further than the exigencies and 
circumstances of the moment for an explanation of its early 
character. There seems to have been no conscious choice be- 
tween alternative forms or models, no consideration of 
theories. Naturally, emigrants did not forget such habits 
and traditions of local government as they brought with them, 
but the needs of the moment rather than theory and precedent 
shaped the Virginia parish and the New England town. It 

45 



46 THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 

is only too evident from the records that the first govern- 
ments grew into being rather than were consciously created. 
The circumstances of settlement, permitting no great ex- 
tremes of wealth or poverty, of education or ignorance, natu- 
rally provided the very conditions best adapted for democ- 
racy. Indeed, any other form of government would have 
been an anomaly, and the various schemes, worthy and un- 
worthy, concocted by capitalists and theorists, from the com- 
plicated system of councils proposed by Sir Thomas Smith 
to the elaborate dreams of John Locke and the constitutional 
experiments of "William Penn, one and all promptly and in- 
gloriously failed. The conditions were right for democ- 
racy and were therefore wrong for feudal palatinates and 
aristocratic lordships. No one tried to plant democratic 
governments; nothing else could be made to grow. 

The beginnings of self-government in the town of Dedham, 
Massachusetts, furnish a most interesting example of this 
natural evolution. The settlers brought with them the tradi- 
tions of the medieval parish and of the close town-corpora- 
tion of Elizabeth's time, with a full panoply of ideas about 
nobles and kings, and little or no actual experience in govern- 
ment. The strongest influence was that of the "Church 
covenant," then in vogue amongst the Puritans and Separa- 
tists, an agreement to abide by the common decision which 
did hold the seed of democratic self-government, but which 
certainly was not intended to sanction anything we should 
recognize as democracy or administration. This was the only 
precedent they seem to have found useful. In 1636, twenty- 
two "proprietors" signed a simple "covenant" or agreement 
to abide individually by the decision of the majority, and 
the community then continued for some weeks to exercise its 
sovereignty by performing the work of the miniature State 
with its own hands.^ It gave neither itself nor its members 
titles nor powers; it discussed neither laws nor theories, and 
formally recognized no necessary governmental relationship 

1 The Records of the Town of Dedham have been published and this 
information is drawn from them. 



THE ORIGIN OF AMERICAN DEMOCRACY 47 

with any other body of men in the world. The "executive" 
business consisted of allotting lands; and the first ordinance 
was thus recorded: "Ordered that the next Fair day every 
man of our society shall meet at the footway and assist to 
mend the same, and soe many as can bring whelbarrowes. " 
The sovereign was at one and the same time executive, legis- 
lature, and judiciary, but found spades and wheelbarrows 
more useful than the pen and the gavel. The only office 
created during the first four years was that of collecting the 
fines due from those who came late to the town-meeting, after 
the beating of the town drum. 

On May 17, 1639, the town adopted its first "constitution," 
and there is no good reason to suppose that Winthrop at Bos- 
ton was consulted. They acted of their own grace and mo- 
tion and recognized no authority as higher than their own. 
"Whereas it hath been found by long experience that the 
general meeting of soe many men in one meeting of the com- 
mon affayres thereof, have waisted much tyme to noe small 
damage, and business is thereby nothing furthered : it is 
therefore nowe agreed by generall consent, that these 7 men 
heerunder named we doe make choice of and give them full 
power to contrive, execute, & performe all the business and 
affayres of this our whoU towne." The sovereign delegated 
the whole of its authority for the space of one year. Surely 
no such "constitution" was ever thought of in England nor 
ever would have been by these same men had they stayed in 
England. Nor would they have thus tacitly assumed their 
complete legal independence of all other authority, had not 
the miles of wilderness between them and the Governor at 
Boston compelled them to act on their own initiative. The 
conditions of the new world fairly thrust the scepter into 
their hands. It is perfectly clear that the annual to\\^l- 
meeting resumed all authority at the close of each year, and 
instead of electing new incumbents to these offices, literally 
created the offices over again. In 1640, a town-clerk and 
surveyors of highways were elected; and the selectmen ap- 
pointed the first administrative officials, — fence-viewers, 



48 THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 

wood-reeves and hog-reeves. The title, ' ' selectmen, ' ' does not 
appear in the records until 1648. 

No doubt the close organization of the New England town 
was largely influenced by the severity of the climate. The 
long winters forced the people to cling together, not only for 
sociability, but for the juster and easier distribution of the 
scanty store of food and fuel. Then too the proximity of the 
Indians made scattered settlement dangerous. Nor was there 
much temptation to stray far from the town. No agriculture 
was profitable in the North until much labor had been ex- 
pended in clearing the land and most men were unwilling to 
put so much time into a few acres which were not favorably 
situated for trade and intercourse. The land around the 
town seemed in most eases as likely to be fertile as that fur- 
ther away, and the difficulties of clearing and cultivation 
made comparatively few acres all one family could really use. 

In the South, the conditions exacted by the tobacco-culture 
created, aided by the traditions of English county and parish 
government, a very different type of local organization. The 
culture of tobacco consisted in sowing the seed in small beds, 
in transplanting the young plants into the earth loosened 
with a hoe between the stumps in a clearing, in hoeing them 
regularly, and in pinching off the shoots and tops which 
developed the stalk at the expense of the leaves. The heat 
of the sun, the arduous and continuous toil, the simplicity of 
the work made profitable the employment of forced or slave 
labor. The mild winters, which left the ground open to 
cultivation nearly if not all the year round, and the necessity 
of constantly clearing new fields to take the place of those 
which could not be artificially fertilized, all tended to make 
the work of the plantation continuous and to tempt the set- 
tlers to draw further and further apart in their eagerness 
to increase the size of their individual holdings. Here were 
conditions as different as could well be conceived from those 
in New England but which no less powerfully worked for 
the growth of self-government. Obviously, the owner of a 
plantation, living with a couple of overseers and from a dozen 



THE ORIGIN OF AMERICAN DEMOCRACY 49 

to a couple of hundred forced laborers or slaves, on a tract 
some thousands of acres in size, miles from his nearest neigh- 
bor, needed desperately authority of a peculiarly broad type. 
But in the nature of things there was no one to whom this 
authority could be delegated or who could effectively use it 
save the planter himself. Where all citizens were in such a 
position, local government was necessarily less concerned 
with the regulation of the behavior of citizens than it was 
with that of their servants or slaves. Misbehavior and crime 
committed by the slave or indented servant had to be punished 
by the master as the only possible delegate of the com- 
munity's authority, and his right to decide what was or was 
not to be punished and what penalty ought to be inflicted had 
to be made as absolute as the imperative necessity of prevent- 
ing insubordination and revolt among the laborers. Elabo- 
rate local government was not needed for there was prac- 
tically no community life; nor, while the plantation system 
lasted, was there likely to be a community life whose needs 
could not be met by the simplest possible arrangements. 
Legislation dealt chiefly with the relation of employer and 
emploj^ee, of master and slave ; the difficulties between masters 
were few. The whole business of the county was little more 
than the collection of the quitrents due the Crown, the re- 
cording of land titles, and the trying of the few law cases 
arising between planter and planter, and could be transacted 
to general satisfaction by at most three officials, whose com- 
bined powers were not infrequently vested in the same in- 
dividual. 

Such conditions naturally induced the belief that govern- 
ment ought to interfere with the individual as little as pos- 
sible; that its sphere of usefulness was so limited that the 
less it did, the better, — a view based upon the undeniable 
fact that in Virginia, in Maryland, and in most places where 
an agricultural population was widely scattered over a great 
area of land, there were very few things which the individual 
imperatively needed, which he could not do for himself more 
promptly and efficiently than the community could possibly 



50 THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 

do them for him. In fact, the need for cooperation was 
slight, and the advantages were obvious of complete control 
over the laborers without too much investigation by others as 
to the justice of the planter's administration of the laws. 
Amid such surroundings, grew up the men whose descend- 
ants believed so firmly in loose construction, in Jeffersonian 
democracy, and in States' rights. Under utterly different 
conditions, which made cooperation as valuable to the New 
Englander as individual discretion was to his Virginian 
cousin, grew up the men whose descendants believed as firmly 
in the benefits of a strong centralized administration, in Fed- 
eralism, and in National government. 

While apparently a less natural evolution than the local 
governments, the State governments were as little the result 
of design and as much the creatures of conditions. Many of 
the first settlers came to the new land as employees of an 
individual or of a trading-company and the royal charter dele- 
gated to the grantee certain powers over them. That any- 
thing more elaborate would be needed than some method for 
deciding simple civil and criminal cases was not anticipated. 
A handful of men in a wilderness would hardly need special 
legislation or complicated organs of administration. Even 
the most intricate schemes of the idealists provided no sepa- 
ration of functions and usually delegated authority and com- 
plete discretion from one body of men to another. The re- 
sponsibility was to be shared rather than the actual work of 
administration. Self-government by men whose very pres- 
ence in the new land betokened their economic dependence 
on some one else was not even thought of as a possibility. An 
adventurer, like IVIorton of Merrymount, "governed" the 
laborers he had hired, and left to his partners the ''govern- 
ment" of their laborers. The Virginia Company delegated 
part of their governmental authority to a council in the 
colony; the merchants who financed the Pilgrims gave them 
authority over the laborers sent with them; while Winthrop 
and the few members of the joint-stock company which be- 
gan the colony at Boston, expected to exercise and certainly 



THE ORIGIN OF AMERICAN DEMOCRACY" 51 

did for some years exert all the authority there was. In 
most colonies, something like autocratic or military rule was 
the actual government of the state for a lengthy period. 
Smith at Jamesto^^^l and Dale after him practically put the 
colony under martial law; the Dutch governors in New 
Netherlands were forced to do the same; and in all the col- 
onies, even in Massachusetts, the real control remained in the 
hands of a few men until well toward the close of the seven- 
teenth century. 

At the same time, practically without an exception, the 
autocrat was compelled to share his power with the settlers 
on a basis which was far removed from the sort of govern- 
ment intended by the King who granted the charter. Indeed, 
most colonial charters were little more than the record of 
English ignorance of American conditions, and scarcely one 
of them had after half a century more than a nominal rela- 
tion to the form of government actually in operation under 
it. It is, indeed, hardly accurate to speak of state or colonial 
government as distinguished from local government before 
1660. Outside of New England, the settlers were either so 
few or so scattered that the whole colony was in practice 
simply the one large town, which governed the whole geo- 
graphical entity, so far as it was governed at all, with some 
spasmodic assistance or interference from the nearest settlers. 
Indeed, the trouble and expense of sharing in the govern- 
ment of the colony, the obvious preference of each individual 
for spending his whole time in the promotion of his own 
economic welfare, the pressure of necessity which forced him 
to solve for himself the more formidable difficulties, left the 
majority of the settlers long indifferent to the form or policy 
of the nominal unit to which they belonged. The growth of 
the community and that alone forced upon a reluctant people 
State government. 

In every colony, however, there grew into being during 
the seventeenth century some sort of a representative as- 
sembly into whose hands fell eventually the direction of the 
government. The most rapid growth was attained in Massa- 



52 THE RISE OF THE AlklERICAN PEOPLE 

chusetts, where alone existed before 1640 enough towns near 
enough to each other to make possible some intercourse and 
to render advantageous some share in the direction of the 
common affairs. The Charter was not meant to provide for a 
government in the colony but it did not forbid it. It did not 
provide for representative government at all: it directed the 
election by the freemen in person (and it was assumed they 
would remain in England), of the usual officers of a joint- 
stock company, called then the Governor and Assistants (the 
modern President and Directors), w^ho were to exercise the 
entire authority vested in the company, subject only to the 
approval of the stockholders at the meeting of the General 
Court. By-laws could of course be passed; the officials in 
America w^ould of course enforce the English civil and crim- 
inal law, and make such arrangements as the exigencies of 
the occasion might dictate. Winthrop, Dudley, and the few 
stockholders who came to America accordingly voted them- 
selves, before landing, the extensive judicial and administra- 
tive powers of an English justice-of-the-peace. Some op- 
position promptly became apparent; their interpretations of 
the English civil and criminal code and their levy of taxes 
were questioned, but Winthrop 's coolness and the ability and 
essential fairness of his administration silenced the objectors. 
He and his associates were forced, however, to admit to mem- 
bership in the trading-company some hundred men w^ho ap- 
plied for admission in 1631. Their rights to a definite share 
in the economic advantages possessed by the company could 
not be denied and the certainty that they could easily obtain 
title to lands and goods in some other part of New England 
counseled acquiescence. But Winthrop and his friends for- 
bore to mention to the new freemen that the Charter invested 
them with broad powers of administration, and continued 
therefore for three years longer to admit new freemen from 
time to time and to exercise such legislative, executive, and 
judicial functions as they deemed advisable. 

Meanwhile, local governments m the various towns around 
Boston sprang into vigorous life and their propinquity to 



THE ORIGIN OF AlklERICAN DEMOCRACY 53 

each other resulted in an organized movement among the resi- 
dent freemen for a share in the government of the stock com- 
pany. Executive orders and demands for taxes had come 
from Boston to these new sovereign communities, and ex- 
cited in their members some wonder as to the authority Win- 
throp possessed. Finally, a committee of investigation ap- 
peared in Boston in 1634 and demanded sight of the Charter, 
which had up to this time been sedulously kept secret. One 
reading opened their eyes. The freemen, thus apprised that 
they possessed a voice in the common affairs equal to that of 
the Governor and Assistants and the right to elect those of- 
ficials yearly (who had hitherto elected themselves to office), 
proceeded immediately to avail themselves of all their privi- 
leges, and from that moment began the transformation of 
the trading-company into democratic representative state 
government. The continued use of names and forms, the 
claim that the Charter authorized these proceedings need not 
blind us to the fact that the General Court from the first 
transacted business never before performed by commercial 
companies (whose governing heads were normally resident 
in England) and by methods which Charles I certainly never 
contemplated when he approved the docquet of the Charter. 
At the same time, the language of the Charter was so broad 
that few things were done which could not be read into its in- 
clusive phrases. 

The direct exercise in person of authority at quarterly meet- 
ings in the performance of a routine business yearly growing 
in volume soon became a burden on men whose individual af- 
fairs necessarily claimed constant attention and unremitting 
toil. Various expedients were tried for securing the exer- 
cise of the freeman's authority without his presence in Boston 
and yet without forcing him to forego the careful considera- 
tion of the matter in hand for which his vote stood. The use 
of proxies merely allowed the men who did go to vote all 
the proxies on new business as they saw fit and thus really de- 
prived their friends of their votes. The freemen then tried 
balloting for officers in their home towns and sent the 



54 THE EISE OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 

"papers" to Boston; but as this compelled them to vote in 
the dark and caused many votes to be wasted, the expedient 
was adopted of holding what we should call a caucus at the 
end of the session of the General Court, at which the freemen 
present prepared what we should call a ''slate" to be sub- 
mitted to all the freemen in all the towns. The freemen soon 
fell into the habit of designating the man to go up to Boston 
to perform these important functions in behalf of the rest. 
Soon, they saw the obvious advantage of investing him with 
full authority to act for them as his judgment dictated in all 
matters of common interest. They could not go in person, 
and, unless they were to sacrifice their power altogether, they 
must delegate it. Thus, the pressure of circumstances created 
in Massachusetts out of the nominal machinery of a trading- 
company a representative assembly, an upper house, and 
an executive of limited powers. Moreover, the fact that there 
were freemen in every town soon changed the emphasis of 
representation; the first deputies were the representatives of 
the freemen only, but their constituents soon came to act as a 
town rather than as freemen, and the assembly soon actually 
represented the proportional strength of the various local 
entities in that geographical district originally granted to 
the trading-company. Thus was an articulated state created 
utterly unlike anything in existence in Europe. 

The emigrants from Massachusetts, who founded the other 
New England colonies, erected everywhere the sort of govern- 
ment already developed in Massachusetts. In fact, the fa- 
mous "written constitution" adopted in Connecticut in 1639 
was nothing but the description of the forms in use in the 
Bay Colony. In Virginia some twenty years earlier, in 1619, 
the Governor had summoned an assembly which was the first 
truly representative body in America; but the loss of the 
Charter in 1624, the broad powers vested in the new royal 
governor, the difficulty of cooperation on the part of people 
so widely scattered and the efficiency of the county govern- 
ment made representative institutions weak till into the eight- 
eenth century. Bacon's Rebellion in 1676 was an unsuccess- 



THE ORIGIN OF AMERICAN DEMOCRACY 55 

ful protest against the autocratic rule of Berkeley. In Mary- 
land and the Carolinas, where quasi-feudal power was vested 
in the proprietors, similar pressure of circumstances pre- 
vented them from exercising it and forced them to share it 
with the colonists. In Pennsylvania, Penn was most anxious 
to establish representative institutions, and, after some dis- 
pute and difficulty, came to an agreement with the people. 
After 1689 ensued three-quarters of a century of rapid de- 
velopment in self-government, which is in some respects the 
most important fact in colonial history, for the colonists 
learned how to govern themselves in state as well as in local 
affairs. So thoroughly did the Atlantic Ocean and the wilder- 
ness do their work, that the Declaration of Independence was 
in very truth merely the statement of an existing political 
and constitutional fact. 

Nor was this all. The uniformly primitive conditions had 
everywhere developed institutions in an essentially similar 
manner. Differences there were, by no means unimportant, 
but on the whole the similarity was so great that all the 
Americans thoroughly understood one another's methods of 
procedure and action. There was no fundamental constitu- 
tional or political obstacle in the way of the formation of a 
single nation out of the English colonies. "I find," wrote 
John Adams to his wife, "although the colonies have differed 
in religion, laws, customs, and manners, yet in the great es- 
sentials of society and government, they are all alike." 
Simple, axiomatic, obvious as this vital fact seems to the 
modern American, its transcendent importance can hardly 
be over-emphasized. The possibility of political union was a 
direct result of the constitutional development of the colonial 
period. From this political experience came the precedent 
for the Constitution and as well for those two notions of the 
proper function of a central government which, under the 
names, broad and narrow construction, have been such 
permanent bonds of political association ever since. 

In the working of colonial governments, too, we meet from 
the very first with a good many of those traits which have 



56 THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 

lately, received so much notice and vilification. Not only have 
most people assumed that our colonial ancestors discovered 
the true frame and form of democracy which later genera- 
tions in their wickedness perverted to strange uses, but they 
have steadfastly believed that the conduct of our ancestors 
was impeccable. The evidence is overwhelming in amount 
and conclusive in character to show that the evils as well as 
the virtues of American democracy are a legacy from the 
colonial period. One of the earliest Massachusetts elections 
was held in Cambridge instead of in Boston as usual, in order 
to increase the attendance of Winthrop's supporters who 
lived in the adjacent smaller towns and to put the formidable 
obstacle of several hours' journey in the way of the attend- 
ance of Mrs, Hutchinson's Boston friends. The latter, when 
they realized the success of Winthrop's manoeuver, tried ob- 
struction and filibustering in hope of using up the time and 
preventing the Court from reaching the election at all. 
For many decades, black and white beans were used in many 
colonies at the polls, and it was a common practice for a 
man to carry a few up his sleeve, which he slid into the box 
when he inserted his hand to vote. Repeating was com- 
mon. John Adams calmly recorded in his diary the defeat 
of a friend at the polls because, after voting for "the first 
time," the candidate's friends went over to the tavern and 
when they returned to vote again found the polls closed! 
The Governor of Rhode Island publicly complained more 
than once that the assembly of that colony was un- 
blushingly for sale. In Boston and most surrounding towns, 
the real government was in the hands of a "ring" of poli- 
ticians of the ultra-modern type. John Adams wrote in his 
diary for February 1773, of "the Caucus Club" which met 
in a certain garret, where they put "questions to the vote 
regularly, and selectmen, assessors, collectors, wardens, fore- 
wards, and representatives are regularly chosen before they 
are chosen in the town." 

If the political development of the colonies had made them 
decade by decade more alike, it had steadfastly carried them 



THE ORIGIN OF AMERICAN DEMOCRACY 57 

in another direction from that which English constitutional 
development had taken. In 1760, the Americans understood 
each other ; they did not understand the political phrases used 
in England nor did the English understand those common in 
America. The pressure put upon the Americans by the wil- 
derness vitally to alter the habits of action they brought 
from Europe is not more difficult to appreciate than the 
changes in England resulting from the Revolutions of 1640 
and 1689. In America, democracy both in town, county, and 
State, had been actually created; in England, had risen the 
House of Commons and Cabinet government. Between such 
divergent ideas a breach was inevitable. Yet American and 
Englishman saw in his own ideas fundamental notions in- 
vested with peculiar sanctity by a century and more of tradi- 
tion; and both were right. The fathers and grandfathers of 
both had lived and died espousing the notions he proclaimed 
in 1760 ; both were honest, both were sincere ; each misunder- 
stood the other; each believed the other was trying to de- 
ceive him and was wittingly making propositions which he 
knew to be false. Nothing short of a century of divergent 
constitutional development could have produced a breach of 
such magnitude between honest men and a difference of 
opinion too fundamental for compromise, explanation, or 
apolog}\ Had it been less serious, the strong peace party on 
both sides of the water in 1775 might have successfully 
averted war. The constitutional development, which gave 
the colonists the political experience indispensable for inde- 
pendence, also resulted in the divergent constitutional ideas 
which caused the breach with the mother-comitry. In a 
double sense, American democracy made the Revolution pos- 
sible. In a very real sense, it is the rock upon which this na- 
tion is built. 

These same decades of quiet colonial growth and develop- 
ment had produced and trained the generation of men who 
were to fight and win independence from England. His- 
torians have long unanimously agreed that for ability, 
probity, learning, and unselfish devotion to a great ideal, the 



68 THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 

men of the American Revolution and of the constitutional 
period will bear comparison with the men alive during any 
crisis of any country's history. The achievements of the 
colonial period were really stupendous. The successful work 
in coping with the many exigencies and needs of colonial life 
was the only thing which could possibly have fitted the leaders 
to meet the astonishing difficulties of the Revolution, the 
Critical Period, and the organization of a central government. 
The prosperity of the colonists alone could have allowed 
them to accumulate those fortunes which permitted them to 
devote their lives to the new cause. Washington was the 
richest man in America; Franklin, John Adams, Jefferson, 
Madison, the Randolphs, Hancock, and many more were men 
of independent means. It is hardly possible for us to con- 
ceive what their adhesion to the cause in 1775 meant ; it com- 
pletely disproved though it did not dispel the notion, then 
widespread in England, that resistance was the work of a 
rabble who had nothing to lose.^ 

George Washington was bom, as he thought, to poverty, 
and trained himself therefore to make his own way in the 
world. When he unexpectedly inherited a great fortune, he 
was therefore singularly fitted to make the best use of it. 
To years of hard labor and outdoor life, he owed his vigor- 
ous constitution and physical endurance; his Indian cam- 
paigns and service under Braddock made him the only man 
in the colonies with any considerable actual experience in 
military matters and the only man acquainted with the effect 
upon British troops of the conditions under which a war 
would have to be fought here. He knew from experience the 
hopelessness of conducting a wilderness campaign upon the 

2 A Committee of Congress, appointed to report on the conduct of the 
English troops in America, declared in April 1777, that the British 
conducted themselves as was to be expected towards "a people, whom 
they have been taught to look upon, not as freemen defending their 
rights on principle, but as desperadoes and profligates, who have risen 
up against law and order in general and wish the subversion of society 
itself. . . . The same deluding principle seems to govern persons and 
bodies of the highest rank in Britain." Journals of the Continental 
Congress, Ford's ed., VII, 279. 



THE ORIGIN OF AMERICAN DEMOCRACY 59 

European model, and he never forgot it. The final victory in 
the war we owe to his keen use of the topography of the 
country to create an impregnable defense. To him we owe 
the victory. He was one of those rare men who loom gigantic 
before the eyes of their contemporaries. He was not as im- 
peccable in little things as he has been represented to be by 
the garrulous Weems and a century of school text-books. 
He was fond of cards, was not a total abstainer, and, though a 
deeply religious man, was by no means devout. Possessed of 
an extraordinary temper, like Henry VIII and Oliver Crom- 
well, he had it under that same extraordinary control. 
Somehow he possessed that thing rarer than genius, more in- 
tangible than magnetism, a superlative sanity and probity. 
He gave the Revolution a watchword unique among rally- 
ing cries: "Let us raise a standard to which the wise and 
honest can repair." Scarcely a dozen men have ever pos- 
sessed in all history the confidence of a great body of men to the 
degree he did. Their willingness to follow him without ask- 
ing explanations or expecting comprehension of the reasons 
is one of the decisive factors in the movements of the time. 
His personal influence kept an army in the field during the 
war, held the jarring statesmen together till the Constitution 
was formed, and then set the new government on its feet. 
One cannot conceive of the Revolution without him. He is 
in the truest sense the father of the present nation. Had 
colonial America never developed into the United States, it 
would still be famous in history because it had produced such 
a man. 

No sooner had the first tentative movements in the quarrel 
with England begun than the need of a foreign ambassador 
was felt who possessed sufficient ability, foresight, and infor- 
mation to meet the statesmen of the old world upon their own 
ground. Colonial America had made such a man out of a 
boy born in Boston in 1706, the fifteenth child of a poor 
Boston soap-maker. Benjamin Franklin had been a printer 
in Boston, Philadelphia, and London by the time he was 
twenty. His "Poor Richard's Almanac," the "Pennsylvania 



60 THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 

Gazette," the printing of the Pennsylvania paper currency 
started him on a business career so successful that he retired 
upon a competence at the age of forty-three. He entered 
local politics and was soon sent to England to negotiate with 
the Peuns for a settlement of the old dispute about the quit- 
rents. His tact and finesse attracted such attention that he 
became the Massachusetts agent, and then the general colonial 
agent at London, where he remained till the outbreak of the 
Revolution. He was acquiring that diplomatic experience of 
which his country stood in need in 1776 when an alliance was 
to be proposed to France. He also brought to the service 
of America a European reputation for scientific achieve- 
ment of the first order, gained by his epoch-making experi- 
ments with electricity. It is certainly an extraordinary fact 
that "the wilderness," as the Europeans called America, 
should have produced a man who was not only a philosopher 
and scientist of the first order, but who was clearly the equal 
of the European diplomatists matched against him, and who, 
as it was remarked with astonishment, was not abashed in 
the presence of kings. The reputation of Franklin in Europe 
for wisdom, sanity, and probity enabled him to borrow vast 
sums of money on no better security than his personal assur- 
ance that some day they would be paid. That such a man 
should be the American ambassador went a long way to- 
wards convincing the French that we deserved independence. 
If the character of Washington was our army, that of Frank- 
lin was our treasury. 



VI 

STATES' SOVEREIGNTY 

The impartial student who reads without prejudgment the 
evidence of the colonial period will hardly be able to avoid 
the conclusion that, whatever nominal bond the individual 
colonies recognized as binding them to the Crown or to a lord 
proprietor in England, they considered themselves sovereign 
States in all but name.^ The tiny Confederation of Ports- 
mouth and Newport formally declared in 1641 that "the Gov- 
ernment which this Bodie Politick doth attend unto in this 
island and the Jurisdiction thereof, in favor of our prince, is a 
Democratic or Popular government; that is to say, it is in 
the power of the Body of freemen orderly assembled, or 
the major part of them, to make or constitute just laws by 
which they will be regulated." The Crown is mentioned 
merely by courtesy; no other authority than that of the 
freemen themselves is recognized ; and not only do they speak 
of ''this Bodie Politick," and denominate it a "confedera- 
tion," both of which terms proclaim sovereignty, but they 
declare "this Bodie Politick" to be a "democratic or Popu- 
lar government." There could scarcely be a more implicit 
renunciation of English sovereignty. When the Long Par- 
liament had firmly grasped the scepter of empire, its leaders 

1 The use of the word "colony" seems to me objectionable for many 
reasons, the chief of which is that it continually reminds the reader of 
a legal superiority of England over them which the Americans never 
recognized in actual practice except when convenient. Until inde- 
pendence was actually declared, however, the word "State" is hardly 
correct, because it denies a relationship to England which in theory the 
Americans gladly recognized. The usage of students sanctions "col- 
ony" and forbids "State," and I have felt it better to employ the 
familiar word except in cases where I have deemed it essential to 
emphasize the fact of States' sovereignty. 

61 



62 THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 

intimated to the Puritans in New England that they would 
be glad to pass any desired legislation. It is an extremely 
significant fact that Massachusetts declined the offer for fear 
of creating a precedent for legislation by Parliament at 
some subsequent epoch when the men in control at Westmin- 
ster might not be so favorably disposed towards the colony. 
This same idea of the proper relationship between England 
and the colonies was writ large in the preamble of the 
Articles of the New England Confederation of 1643. By 
the outbreak of the Civil War, they say: "We are hindered 
both from that humble way of seeking advice, and reaping 
those comfortable fruits of protection which at other times 
we might expect. ' ' And from whom could they more reason- 
ably have expected "advice" and "protection" than from 
their co-religionists? Already the New England colonies saw 
themselves as States independent of the mother-country in 
all but name, the only connection with England being their 
right to seek advice and protection. Of English rule, of 
English right to interfere in colonial administration, we find 
no recognition. The very word "colony" is rare except in 
the most formal documents and is almost invariably coupled 
with the term commonly employed, "jurisdiction." After 
Edmund Randolph had been in Massachusetts some months 
in 1676 this fact became very clear to him. "In this as well 
as in other things," he wrote, "that government [of Massa- 
chusetts] would make the world believe they are a free State 
and [they] act in all matters accordingly." In very truth, 
the position which the States assumed in 1776 was the same 
they had held throughout their earlier history. They never 
had recognized more than a nominal right of England to 
interfere in America and they did not propose to accept at 
the dictation of George III a theory in regard to their status 
which their fathers had uniformly rejected as untrue and 
inexpedient. The Americans in 1776 took their stand upon 
the solid basis of history as they knew it to have happened. 
In sooth, though the English government was early in- 
formed of this tendency by the enemies of the colonists, and 



STATES' SOVEREIGNTY 63 

though it several times felt the matter important enough to 
deserve investigation, the exigencies of the situation in Eng- 
land itself gave Charles I and his sons little real oppor- 
tunity to press the matter to a conclusion. The attitude of 
]\Iassachusetts at these times is extremely significant from the 
point of view of the Revolution. When the news arrived in 
1634 that the King meant to appoint a new governor for the 
colony, the General Court ordered the harbor fortified, ap- 
pointed a commission of war and called out the militia, in ex- 
pectation, they announced, of ''danger from the French." 
There is no fact in colonial history more remarkable than 
this: that four years after the founding of Boston, the men 
of Massachusetts were prepared to fight England in 
maintenance of their liberties. The spirit of 1776 is 
merely the recrudescence of the spirit of 1634. "When 
the royal commissioners were expected in 1664, the General 
Court ordered out the militia, and appointed a committee to 
hide the Charter. The Commissioners learned to their amaze- 
ment that they were expected to land with only a few men, 
unarmed, and that, instead of receiving the royal representa- 
tives with joy, the community was holding a day of fasting 
and humiliation. A good deal of verbal willingness to meet 
the King's demands was expressed, but the numerous delays 
and the excessive amount of discussion which followed every 
request soon roused the suspicions of the Commissioners, who 
at length formally asked whether the General Court recog- 
nized the validity of their commission. The Court replied 
that it wished respectfully to know wherein the colonists were 
at fault, and, after much pressing, finally said : ' ' We humbly 
conceive it is beyond our line to declare our sense of the 
power, intent, or purpose of your commission. It is enough 
for us to acquaint you what we conceive is granted to us by 
his ]\Iajesty's royal charter. If you rest not satisfied with 
our former answer, it is our trouble, but we hope it is not our 
fault." The Commissioners rebuked them and notified them 
that they proposed next day to avail themselves of their com- 
mission and try a case. The next morning they found a 



64 THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 

messenger of the General Court on their doorstep, warning 
the people by the "allegiance that they owed to his Majesty," 
not to aid or abet them, for they were usurping powers which 
were not rightfully theirs. The General Court a few hours 
later tried that case itself. 

Some very plain language reached the Commissioners' ears: 
" They say that so long as they pay the fifth of all gold and 
silver according to the terms of the Charter, they are not 
obliged to the King, but by civility;" "they say they can 
easily spin out seven years by writing, and before that time 
a change may come." They had solicited Cromwell "by one 
Mr. Winsloe to be declared a Free State, and now style and 
believe themselves to be so." Charles replied with a royal 
order to send the officers of the colony to England. The 
General Court, when shown it, expressed doubts as to its 
authenticity and asked proof that the signature was really 
the King's! Charles, however, was unwilling to press the 
matter and allowed it to drop. Had he shown George Ill's 
determination to force from them an acknowledgment of 
England's sovereignty, is it difficult to imagine the result? 
In the other colonies, the same leaven was at work. Penn's 
agent wrote him in 1704: "This people think privileges their 
due and all that can be grasped to be their native right, . . . 
They think it their business to secure themselves against a 
Queen 's government. ' ' 

In fact, the colonies saw in 1776 that the declaration of 
their independence would involve no real administrative dif- 
ficulties, because they had in very truth never been actually 
governed by England at all. As Franklin ironically told the 
House of Commons, the colonies before 1763 had been easily 
governed at the expense of only "a little pen, ink, and paper; 
they were led by a thread." Nor did his hearers perceive 
that he spoke the literal truth. There was, indeed, in the 
colonies in 1760, as there had been throughout the preceding 
century, a prodigious admiration for England, a feeling that 
it was "home," and, as Franklin said, "to be an Old Eng- 
land man was of itself a character of some respect and gave 



STATES' SOVEREIGNTY 65 

a kind of rank among us," Even the early Puritans had 
considered the English Church their mother-church, had at- 
tended its services when in England, and had spoken of 
it with evident affection. At the same time, paradoxically, 
the colonists felt no gratitude was due the Crown or Parlia- 
ment for their existence or prosperity. The Address pre- 
sented by Massachusetts to Parliament in 1661 declared sig- 
nificantly that they had transplanted themselves at their own 
expense and owed their present condition to their own efforts 
in the preceding thirty years during which they had been 
undisturbed. The attempts of~ the Crown to collect quitrents 
in Virginia, the energy with which the Baltimores and the 
Penns had attempted to collect their rents, were conspicuous 
features of life in those colonies, and had roused even by 
1700 a resentment, often openly expressed, against these at- 
tempts to derive a revenue from the colony. The Penns were 
told more than once that the colony was not a private estate 
which owed them rent, but a body politic, whose members 
possessed the right of self-government, and of which the pro- 
prietors were members, like other citizens. The citizens ob- 
jected to the payment of rent not because its amount was 
excessive, but because they did not feel themselves bound 
by law or gratitude to pay it at all. And these facts were 
prominent in the minds of the leaders who fought the Kevolu- 
tion. "The settlement," wrote Jefferson in 1786, "was not 
made by public authority and at the public expense of Eng- 
land, but by the exertions and at the expense of individuals. ' ' 
Colonial experience had taught the colonists that they owed 
England no gratitude for what they had not received. 

The fault was not altogether that of intention at White- 
hall. As soon as Charles II was firmly seated on the throne, 
he created a committee of the Privy Council to supervise the 
colonial governments, which was continued under various 
names and did all that was done to govern them until 1763. 
This was in truth little, but it is difficult to see how it could 
have been more. The average voyage to England consumed 
six weeks and the colonists knew, therefore, that they could 



66 THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 

not receive a reply to an appeal for advice or protection, even 
if acted upon at once, in less than three full months at the 
soonest. A little experience showed them that they must wait 
for a reply nearly a year. After their petition reached Lon- 
don, it must be read, the facts investigated, their request 
considered and passed upon by a number of busy men, who 
ordinarily had before them awaiting action a score of mat- 
ters equally urgent. As was usual, the work of the commit- 
tee devolved upon one man, its secretary, William Blathwayt, 
whose diligence and energy were remarkable, but were 
completely overwhelmed by the physical labor of merely read- 
ing the mountain of papers concerning administrative routine 
voluntarily submitted by the colonies. Anything like effect- 
ive supervision was practically impossible. If an order was 
sent to a colony, the committee well knew that the colonists 
would have a full six months to disobey it before proceedings 
could be instituted against them or even information of their 
delinquency brought to London. A law, ''repugnant to the 
laws of England," and forbidden therefore by the charters, 
would usually have been in full operation for months if not 
years before the London office discovered its repugnancy. 
With twelve legislatures producing laws on the Atlantic 
coast, the work of reading them became a formidable task, and 
the difficulty of detecting and dealing promptly with objection- 
able laws exceedingly great. Well aware of these facts, the 
colonists easily prevented any supervision at all over impor- 
tant matters by passing laws for one year only, which would 
no longer be in force when read in England, and which could 
easily be repassed year after year by the legislature without 
fear of the effectual exercise of the royal veto. The second 
Massachusetts charter required the submission to the English 
authorities of all "acts," so the General Court submitted a 
long list of unimportant "acts," and transacted all important 
business by means of "resolves" which were not required to 
be sent to England. In Pennsylvania, all acts were required 
to be submitted every five years to the English authorities, 
a provision easily evaded by passing acts likely to be vetoed 



STATES' SOVEREIGNTY 67 

for periods not longer than four years and six months. Dum- 
mer, the Massachusetts agent in London, wrote home in 
1716 that the Secretary of State had told him that "by 
several votes and resolutions of the lower House, printed in 
their journals, we showed an inclination to be independent 
of the administration here [in England] and that we treated 
the King's commands as waste paper." 

No sooner had the authorities in England become aware of 
this propensity than they undertook to overcome it; at first 
by the supervision of the Committee of Trade and Plantations, 
and then by the appointment of governors who would ac- 
complish on the ground what could not be done by officials 
in England. The colonists were equal to the emergency. 
Without coming to an open breach with the Crown, they 
managed to nullify the work of the royal governors and 
other appointive officials, or, in those colonies which chose 
their own officers, succeeded in evading supervision. Mas- 
sachusetts held governor after governor helpless by refusing 
to vote him a salary or make any regular allowance either 
for the expenses of administration or for his household. 
They paid him from time to time by allowing him to sign a bill 
voting him a present after he had affixed his signature to the 
bills the General Court wished passed. Strict orders were 
sent from England prohibiting the acceptance of anything 
but a salary, for the authorities rightly saw that much might 
be expected from a governor financially independent, and 
nothing at all from a man dependent upon the assembly's 
votes for the very bread on his table. Yet governor after 
governor found it impossible to resist this pressure from the 
legislature. 

There seems to have been a general recognition of the 
right of judicial appeal to the Privy Council from the colo- 
nial courts; but, though frequently used by individuals, it 
was chiefly confined to cases where the colonial judges pat- 
ently were not sure what decision to render. 

The only series of general regulations made by the mother- 
country were systematically disregarded from the moment they 



68 THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 

were made. The Navigation Acts, passed during the reigns 
of Charles II and William III, restricted the trade of the 
mother-country with the colonies and that of the outside 
world with her colonies entirely to English and colonial ships. 
The more important colonial staples — sugar, molasses, to- 
bacco, dye-woods — were to be carried only to other English 
colonies or to England. Trade with foreign countries or with 
their West India colonies was forbidden. Not only were the 
detailed regulations of these acts disobeyed, but even their 
general intent was nullified. The coast was crowded with 
smugglers ; sugar and molasses were openly sold at more than 
one place for less money than the duty; most ships carried 
several sets of false papers, and traded at will with the 
foreign sugar islands in the West Indies and with Europe. 
The English calculated in 1767 that a trade worth more than 
a quarter of a million pounds sterling was being carried 
on by America with Germany and Holland. Attempt after 
attempt to stop the smuggling was of no avail; new acts, 
new regulations, were simply waste paper, and few or no 
men could be found in America who were willing to accept 
an appointment as customs officer, so excessively unpopular 
was the service and so determined were the colonists to evade 
the regulations. Randolph was astonished at the lengths to 
which they went in Boston in 1676 to thwart him. They 
landed their goods at night and when he appeared to investi- 
gate arrested him for breaking the curfew rule; they landed 
the goods on Sunday, and arrested him for working on the 
Sabbath. The courts would issue only special search war- 
rants permitting him to search only for specified articles in 
a specified place. He found that the merchants had built 
a series of connecting warehouses, and, after they had seen 
his warrant, kept him standing at the door while they rolled 
the sugar and molasses into the next warehouse. When there 
was nothing he could seize left in the place he was allowed 
to search, they admitted him. Their intention to disobey was 
an open secret. Violence was not unfrequent in later years 
where the customs officers showed any real determination: 



STATES' SOVEREIGNTY 69 

heads were broken, ships burned, officers tarred and feathered, 
ridden on rails, or even murdered. It is easy to understand 
the fierce objection to the Writs of Assistance in 1761, which 
permitted the search and seizure of dutiable goods wherever 
the officer could find them; they made all the familiar ex- 
pedients for evasion useless. Another difficulty was experi- 
enced in the jury trials of such men as were arraigned. It 
was almost impossible to secure a conviction from any local 
jury and the English admiralty officials were anxious to obtain 
the right to try such cases in some other colony than that 
where the offense was committed. As few men were innocent 
and few cases were tried where the party was not caught 
flagrante delicto, such a removal of the trial was tantamount 
to certain conviction, and the penalties for breach of the acts 
were extremely severe. The colonists therefore resisted these 
proposals stoutly. It is extremely interesting to note the 
similarity of the measures which roused such indignation after 
1760 to those which had excited active opposition during 
the colonial period. The outbreak after 1760 was due not 
only to the fact that the English government was making a 
systematic and persistent attempt at enforcement for prac- 
tically the first time, but also to the new consciousness of 
the colonists of their growing strength and of the actuality 
of their independence. 

The favorite idea in England for the solution of all these 
difficulties was that of a colonial union of some sort, and 
many schemes were evolved and proposed. Some provided 
for a common administrative and judicial machinery; others 
contemplated some sort of a general legislative body with more 
or less limited powers; but one and all established a central 
machinery intended to be directed by the Crown, even when 
its officers were not actually to be appointed in England, and 
patently meant to supersede the authority of the individual 
colonies in many matters of importance, and perhaps to out- 
vote the unruly by means of the more peaceable. One such 
scheme was actually put into operation with disastrous re- 
sults. Sir Edmund Andros was appointed Governor of New 



70 THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 

England, New York, and New Jersey, with broad powers and 
unusual privileges to take the place of the charters just re- 
voked in 1684. Some opposition was expected, and probably 
nothing but the knowledge of impending changes in England 
prevented an actual rebellion before 1689 when, on pretense 
of casting out the Stuarts, Andros was put in jail and the 
old charter governments restored. William III was not al- 
together blind to the fact that enthusiasm for him had not 
been the chief motive at work, and only after great suspensa 
and some difficulty were much less favorable charters ob- 
tained. This was, however, until the Revolution the only 
attempt to institute any uniform administration. 

The reply of the colonies to the other schemes for centrali- 
zation and for a central government was an unqualified neg- 
ative. No scheme won colonial approval which was not based 
upon the conception of the several colonies as sovereign States. 
The New England Confederation, formed in 1643, was a 
league of States for offense and defense, and contained in 
one of its first clauses an explicit reservation of the liberties 
and privileges of each "jurisdiction." In their dealings with 
each other, the colonies always preserved scrupulously this 
attitude and signed "treaties," made commercial regulations, 
granted letters of marque, coined money, declared war and 
peace, and performed most of the varied acts customarily 
reserved to the sovereign. In some cases, the language of the 
charter lent directly or indirectly some color to these pro- 
ceedings, but it is safe to say that they were not undertaken 
because of the existence of any such permission, nor limited 
to powers authorized by even a liberal interpretation of any 
document. Whatever they were in law or in name, the 
colonies were and always had been individually sovereign and 
they had in 1760 and 1776 absolutely no intention of sur- 
rendering that independence to each other, to a central ad- 
ministration, or to England. Several schemes were suggested 
by colonists for three or four sectional governments and these 
met with some favor. At Albany, in 1754, representatives of 
the colonies finally agreed upon a scheme for a general govern- 



STATES' SOVEREIGNTY 71 

ment, which was much disliked in England because the powers 
allotted the general government were too few and those re- 
served to the individual colonies too many, because the central 
administration was not strong and the thirteen colonies in- 
comparably too independent. It found equally little favor 
in America because it gave the general government the power 
of taxation and the control of commerce. The one the in- 
dividual colonies had always had, the other they had always 
coveted. In truth, one cardinal fact of the colonial period 
is the legal and actual independence of the several colonies of 
each other and their actual independence of England. 
States' sovereignty was the only idea which possessed much 
precedent in 1775, and the only idea of cooperation ever tried 
and widely approved had been that of a loose confederation 
of sovereign States, which had control neither of taxation 
nor of commerce, and whose central authority was little more 
than a general agent whose masters from time to time in- 
dicated their wishes. Surely it is significant to find the 
Parliamentary Commission of 1652 conceding to Virginia in 
exchange for her submission, that ''the Grand Assembly as 
formerly shall convene and transact the affairs of Virginia," 
and that the Virginians should have freedom of trade "as 
the people of England do," and should "be free from all 
taxes, customs, and impositions whatsoever, and none to be 
imposed upon them without consent of the Grand Assembly." 
"The bottom of all the disorder," wrote Hutchinson from 
Massachusetts in 1772, is "the opinion that every colony has 
a legislature within itself, the acts and doings of which are 
not to be controlled by Parliament, and that no legislative 
power ought to be exercised over the colonies except by their 
legislatures." The Revolution was fought by precisely that 
sort of an organization which colonial experience had shown 
was the only one for which the general consent could be 
gained. 

There was naturally no accepted idea whatever of a nation 
as we now conceive it; there was indeed no sentiment in 
favor of nationality; each colony wished to be independent 



72 THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 

not only of England but of its neighbors, and would not have 
entered the struggle on any other terms. The strong bond of 
economic interest which was later to furnish such cogent 
reasons for nationality was as yet non-existent because the 
colonies were as yet contiguous only "on paper." The colo- 
nial period, from the point of view which we apply to 
later history, is the study of the foreign relations of the 
separate States with each other and with England. In no 
colony was there a majority in favor of a national government 
superior in obligation in its relations to the individual to the 
latter 's duty to his colony. When Patrick Henry declared 
himself not a Virginian but an American, he proclaimed not 
a fact but a vision. 



VII 

THE IMMEDIATE CAUSES OF THE REVOLUTION 

The fundamental causes of the Revolution are writ large in 
the history of the colonial period. The rapidly increasing 
population of the colonies, their growing wealth, the depend- 
ence of the West India Islands upon their produce, their long 
experience in self-government, their determination not to sub- 
mit to dictation or control from England or from each other, 
had made them more and more conscious with each succeed- 
ing decade of the weakness of England's control over them, 
of the almost insuperable difficulties which the width of the 
Atlantic interposed in the way of schemes for strengthening 
it or for making it more effective. They saw, indeed, that 
they had always stood alone and they naturally concluded 
that they might now as well declare the fact. The longer 
they studied the story of the settlement of the country, the 
less they felt themselves bound to the mother-country by ties 
of gratitude for an aid in money or in men which she had 
either been unwilling or unable to send. The Navigation 
Acts on their very face were intended to benefit only the 
citizens of England itself, for Ireland and Scotland were 
expressly excluded from their privileges; the royal governors 
had imposed expense upon the colonies and, instead of render- 
ing valuable service in administration, had done their best to 
prevent the transaction of the public business in the ways 
which experience had taught the colonists to be the most ex- 
pedient. Not the suffering, but the prosperity of the colo- 
nies, not their weakness but their strength, not the tyranny 
of an autocratic government but the obvious lack of any 
effective supervision at all, caused the Revolution. They 
had grown to a realization of the truth of Berkeley's warn- 

73 



74 THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 

ing to the Virginia Assembly in 1652. "What is it can be 
hoped for [from the Parliament] which we have not already? 
Is it liberty ? The sun looks not upon a people more free than 
we are from all oppression. Is it wealth ? . . . Industry and 
thrift in a short time may bring us to ... it. ... Is it .. . 
peace? The Indians, God be blessed, round about us are 
subdued; we can only feare the Londoners." 

The immediate causes of the outbreak are to be found in 
the changed conditions after the close of the Seven Years' 
War and in the events of the years from 1760 to 1775. The 
result of the Seven Years' War was of transcendent impor- 
tance : the departure of the French from Canada removed the 
only external reason the colonists had for valuing the con- 
nection with England. The existence of the French colony 
rather than its history, its loss rather than the method of 
its loss indicate the salient influence of the French upon the 
history of the United States. Before the fur-traders had been 
long settled in the St. Lawrence Valley, they discovered that 
it lay just north of the corn-belt and that the existence of a 
colony there would always be precarious because of the diffi- 
culty of ripening a full crop of the only indigenous grain. 
The attempts to escape from the Valley are the most vital 
part of the history of French Canada. Through New York 
lay a splendid road down the Richelieu River and the lakes 
to within a few miles of the Hudson and the Atlantic Ocean. 
Through the Connecticut River valley lay another desirable 
road. Along both lay fertile fields in a climate which made 
the cultivation of maize as successful as it was precarious 
around the St. Lawrence. The knowledge of this eagerness 
to secure possession of New York or New England rather 
than their actual strength in Canada caused the abiding fears 
of invasion in the English colonies, which bound them firmly 
to the English allegiance for a century and more. To the 
Congregationalists of New England, the greatest danger was 
to be feared from Catholicism, and a stock part of every war 
scare in the eighteenth century were the lurid tales of the 
ship-loads of inquisitors and instruments of torture which 



THE IMMEDIATE CAUSES OF THE REVOLUTION 75 

were following in the wake of the great French fleet, coming 
from France to cooperate with an army from Canada in an 
attack upon New York or Boston. 

Had Champlain not offended the Iroquois in 1609 the 
history of the United States might have been different. That 
powerful confederacy of the ablest and best organized In- 
dians on the continent held sway over a vast territory rang- 
ing from the Alleghanies to the IVIississippi and from southern 
Tennessee to the Great Lakes. Their home land was in New 
York and their determined opposition to the French and 
persistent friendliness to the English, despite promises, bribes, 
and missionaries, interposed an impenetrable wall between the 
French and the fertile fields of the Atlantic coast, and thus 
condemned Canada to insignificance. The only hope lay to 
the west in the Mississippi Valley beyond and behind the in- 
fluence of the Iroquois. There were fertile fields and a vast 
supply of furs. Yet, while striving to build up this empire 
in the west, the French never quite abandoned hope of reach- 
ing the Atlantic Ocean. But the alliance between the Iroquois 
and the English was so firmly cemented in 1684 by Governor 
Dongan of New York that only the New England colonies 
remained exposed to the attacks of the coureurs de hois and 
the Indians of the St. Lawrence region. So strong was 
New England that nothing more than marauding expeditions 
was to be feared unless assistance should come in force from 
France. More than once such a great expedition was planned ; 
at least once French regiments from Canada reached the 
neighborhood of Albany undetected and could have captured 
it; and, if small scouting parties could unchecked ravage the 
very heart of New England, the decisive success of an attack 
in force was more than probable.^ Under such circumstances, 

1 How strong these fears were is shown by the statement prepared by 
Commissioners of the colonies assembled, at Albany in 1754. "That it 
is the evident design of the French to surround the British Colonies, 
to fortify themselves on the back thereof, to take and keep possession 
of the Heads of all the important Rivers, to draw over the Indians to 
their Interest and with the help of such Indians, added to such Forces 
as are already arrived and may be hereafter sent from Europe, to be 



76 THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 

nothing could save the colonies but an English army and an 
English fleet. Nor should we ever forget that between 1660 
and 1763, France was accounted easily the most powerful 
nation in Europe. This potentiality the victories of Wolfe 
definitively removed, and, as travelers and English political 
writers had busily prophesied for more than a decade, Eng- 
land lost what Kahn considered ''the best means of keeping 
her colonies in due submission." 

A series of events had also practically ended the dangers 
of attack from the coast Indians. As decade by decade the 
colonies grew larger in population, and extended further and 
further into the interior, the Indians were of necessity pushed 
nearer and nearer the mountains; the whites began actually 
to outnumber them in most districts, and the possibility of 
anything more than sporadic outbreaks disappeared. Peace 
and quiet were assured even more certainly by the growing 
scarcity of fur-bearing animals along the Atlantic coast, by 
the consequent decay of the fur-trade, and by the concomitant 
disappearance of the illicit traders who had so threatened 
the existence of the infant communities by distributing fire- 
arms and fire-water. Such trade as remained the colonists 
were able strictly to regulate. In addition, the founding of 
the Hudson Bay Company in the middle of the seventeenth 
century and the exploration by the French of the Mississippi 
Valley opened a vast and virgin field of operations for the 
fur-traders, and thither hastened the adventurous spirits, thus 
ridding the Atlantic coast of the very men whose dealings 
and behavior had so frequently given the Indians just cause 
for offense. 

A century, too, had greatly altered the Indians ' ideas of the 
white men. At first, the notion of private property in land 
was new to the savages, and the superiority of iron hatchets 
and kettles, to say nothing of guns and liquor, over anything 

in a Capacity of making a general attack ujwn the several Governments. 
And if at the same Time a strong Naval Force be sent from France, 
there is the utmost Danger that the whole Continent will be subjected 
to that Crown." Colonial Records of Pennsylvania, VI, 103. 



THE IMMEDIATE CAUSES OF THE REVOLUTION 77 

the Indian possessed was so marked that few chiefs hesitated 
before assenting to deeds of sale whose purport they did not 
understand. The white man wanted land for corn, grass for 
his cattle, wood for his wigwam; and they supposed that, 
like the Indian, he would soon move his habitation when the 
land became exhausted. The very idea of permanent pos- 
session was not grasped at first, and when such Indians as 
Philip comprehended it, a fierce hatred for the intruders led 
them to begin a crusade of extermination. The ease with 
which the outbreaks of 1675 and 1676 were suppressed damp- 
ened the ardor of the savages and reassured the whites. By 
1760, the colonists knew themselves capable of coping with 
any Indian uprising. No aid from English troops was needed. 
Indeed, the colonial scorn for Braddock's methods and troops 
was ill concealed, and his defeat rendered extremely unlikely 
any subsequent requests to the mother-country for assistance. 
This precise moment, when the colonists for the first time 
felt free from the dangers with which the French and the 
Indians had so long menaced them, was selected by the English 
ministry as opportune for the introduction of uniform ad- 
ministrative regulations, which could not fail to raise ques- 
tions of the character and value of the colonial relations with 
England. Of economic, political, and social conditions in 
America, George III and his advisers knew little ; of the colo- 
nial hostility towards England, they were aware but thought 
it merely insubordination. That the colonies possessed any 
vitally different economic interests from those of England 
and Englishmen, that English political ideas and phraseology 
would connote very different things to the colonists than they 
did to Englishmen, they do not seem to have suspected. They 
knew indeed that no real control of the colonies had hitherto 
existed, but they deemed it a result of the stupidity and 
inertia of their own predecessors and of the stubborn spirit 
of the Americans rather than a consequence of fundamental 
geographical factors, which still stood in the way of the estab- 
lishment of any efficient administration. Indeed, the fact that 
no effective control had existed was to them an admirable 



78 THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 

reason for creating a system which should make English 
sovereignty more than a name. 

Indubitably, the conquest of Canada caused England seri- 
ously to consider the status of her possessions in America, 
and forced upon her attention the fact that the growth of the 
continental colonies during the past half-century had vastly 
changed the problem of dealing with them. The few scat- 
tered settlements had become States whose size, prosperity, 
and spirit forbade the longer continuance of the old policy 
of laissez-faire. The new English policy aimed at centrali- 
zation, at **the weaving of this land into our system ... so 
that Great Britain may be ... a grand maritime dominion 
consisting of our possessions in the Atlantic and in America 
united into one Empire, into one center where the seat of 
government is," To this end Charles Townshend proposed 
to replace the varied forms of colonial government by a uni- 
form system of local administration which would furnish a 
firm basis for an efficient central administration over them all. 
Experience showed the necessity of taking from the colonial 
legislatures the power of the purse and of providing by 
customs duties and stamp taxes, collected by royal officers 
appointed from England, a sufficiently large revenue to sup- 
port an army, pay the salaries of executive and judicial 
officers, and in general defray the expenses of colonial ad- 
ministration. Only in this way could any independence be 
secured for the royal officials and obedience be ensured to 
the administrative regulations which should weave England 
and her colonies into one great articulate Empire. If the 
Navigation Acts and the Sugar Acts could be actually en- 
forced, the revenue would be considerable and the remainder 
of the necessary sum could be obtained by indirect taxes 
whose incidence would be extremely light. Disobedience and 
evasion of explicit royal orders, smuggling and piracy, trade 
with foreign colonies and European countries, none of which 
could continue without disrupting the new Empire before 
it was born, would all cease; order, harmony, and efficiency 
would take the place of the old haphazard rule. 



THE IMMEDIATE CAUSES OP THE REVOLUTION 79 

If we assume with Townshend that the colonies were merely 
dependencies of England, to be governed by the Crown in 
accordance with the legislation passed by Parliament, if we 
find glorious as he the vision of a greater entity built out of 
the mother-country and colonies for the ultimate benefit of 
both, then we shall agree with his conclusion of the justice, 
equity, and expediency of such a scheme. If, on the other 
hand, we take as our premise the actual condition of colonies 
which had been for more than a century sovereign States 
in all but name, we shall begin to understand the instanta- 
neous opposition which those proposals roused in America. 
To a people, most of whom had never been even asked for any 
taxes beyond their local levies, few of whom had paid even 
the quitrents to which the holding of their land obligated 
them with any regularity and without constant protest, the 
proposal to establish a series of taxes, however mild and 
judicious, could not fail to be regarded as an innovation 
deserving of the keenest scrutiny. And the purposes for 
which this revenue was to be spent were undoubtedly of 
questionable expediency. The institution of a uniform cen- 
tralized administration for all the colonies, directed by the 
English ministry, composed of officers whom they appointed 
and paid, certainly involved the complete overthrow of the 
system of government which had been in existence ever since 
the colonies were founded. The colonial legislatures had been 
practically supreme and had directed and controlled the Eng- 
lish governors with little regard for the technicalities of 
constitutional law, for instructions from kings, or for pro- 
tests from the Board of Trade and Plantations. Each legis- 
lature had tighth^ drawn the strings of the colonial purse 
and had never paid a penny to an English appointee with- 
out first being assured of his performance of their wishes. 
The colonies had virtually controlled their own policies and 
their own legislation, and, realizing, as the Massachusetts 
men told the Commissioners of Charles II, that they could 
"easily spin out seven years by writing," had recked little 
of English policies and royal displeasure. Undoubtedly, the 



80 THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 

colonies had passed a vast number of conflicting regulations; 
the franchise, taxation, local government, the criminal and 
civil codes were alike only in their fundamental notions, and 
interposed a very real barrier in the way of administrative 
efficiency as the English understood it. Yet these same local 
peculiarities were regarded by the colonists in 1765 as the 
most characteristic and admirable feature of American de- 
velopment. Each little community was eager to preserve in- 
tact the right to adapt itself to such exigencies of its economic 
and political needs as the practical demands of the moment 
might dictate. Uniform regulations were suited to uniform 
conditions; a single policy to a people whose interests and 
aims were identical ; but were highly inexpedient for thirteen 
communities whose dissimilarities were more striking than the 
similarities. The majority of Americans, in fact, did not 
believe a uniform administration desirable or possible. Had 
their fathers struggled hard to avoid paying the governor a 
fixed salary and to prevent the regular collection of the 
proprietor's rents, that they might yield the control of the 
purse without a protest? Had their fathers overthrown An- 
dros, negatived every English plan of organic union to cling 
fast to the idea of a league of sovereign States, only that 
the sons might in their folly permit the establishment of the 
very type of government which their fathers had deemed 
inexpedient? Had the work of the legislatures ever been 
so inefficient, had the royal governors ever demonstrated such 
conspicuous ability as to justify the transfer of the real 
direction of colonial administration from the one to the 
other? Nor could the colonists believe that a standing army 
in America, instituted at the very moment when the real 
dangers of the past century were clearly at an end, could 
be intended to cope with anything but the resistance of the 
colonists themselves to the new arrangements. Whatever 
pleas for a new and more glorious British Empire might be 
used to lend a specious splendor to such proposals, their 
acceptance certainly meant the renunciation of the virtual 



THE i:MiVIEDIATE CAUSES OF THE REVOLUTION 81 

sovereignty and independence which each colony had un- 
doubtedly enjoyed ever since it had been founded. 

If the administrative result of the English reforms would 
be the overthrow of local administration, the economic re- 
sults certainly threatened to bankrupt the colonies. An 
efficient central government meant the actual enforcement of 
the Navigation and Sugar Acts, and meant the cessation of 
the lucrative smuggling trade with the foreign sugar colonies 
on which the very prosperity of the continental colonies was 
believed to rest.^ The Sugar Act of 1733 had been intended 
to prevent the direct importation by the continental colo- 
nies of molasses, rum, or sugar from the foreign West India 
Islands and had imposed customs duties meant to be pro- 
hibitive and penalties for evasion believed to be severe enough 
to intimidate offenders. Yet, from the first, the Act was 
null and void in America. Sugar had been openly sold in 
Boston for less than the duty and the English government 
had with difficulty collected £2000 of revenue annually at 
an expenditure of £7000 for perception. The Sugar Act of 
1764, by far the most offensive of all pre-revolutionary acts, 
made the Act of 1733 perpetual, increased the amount of the 
duties and the severity of the penalties, and provided for 
the exercise by English naval and customs authorities of 
such plenary powers for the detection and punishment of 

2 The Sugar Act of 1764 "will put a total stop to our exportation of 
lumber, horses, flour, and fish, to the French and Dutch sugar colonies; 
and if any one supposes we may find a sufficient vent for these articles 
in the English Islands in the West Indies, he only verifies what was 
just now observed, that he wants truer information. Putting an end 
to the importation of foreign molasses, at the same time puts an end to 
all the costly distilleries in these colonies, and to the rum trade to the 
coast of Africa, and throws it into the hands of the French. With 
the loss of the foreign molasses trade the codfishery of the English in 
America must also be lost and throAvii also into the hands of the 
French. . . . This, nor any part of it, is not exaggeration but a sober 
and most melancholy truth. . . . Ministers have great influence and 
parliaments great power : can either of them change the nature of 
things, stop all our means of getting money and yet expect us to pur- 
chase and pay for British manufactures?" Stephen Hopkins, The Rights 
of Colonies Examined, 12, 13. (1765.) 



82 THE RISE OF THE MIERTCAN PEOPLE 

offenses as are now exercised by the United States Eevenue 
officers. To this, the colonists paid and intended to pay no 
more attention than they had always paid to English 
acts which seemed detrimental to their welfare. 

To their wrath and astonishment, however, the English 
ministry promptly evinced a hitherto unheard of amount of 
energy and decision, and introduced first a Stamp Act and 
then various revenue bills to raise money to maintain in 
America an administrative and military corps capable of 
enforcing the Navigation Acts, new and old. The Stamp 
Tax was not indeed a bad form of taxation and was then in 
operation in England without objection, and has since been 
frequently used in the United States; the duties were ex- 
tremely moderate, and all the varieties of commercial paper 
which the ordinary man was likely to handle were exempted 
altogether. The opposition in America came from the clear 
evidence afforded by the Act itself of the purpose of its 
passage. The Commissioners were to be appointed by the 
Crown ; their powers were broad, their discretion unlimited ; 
the culprits could at discretion be tried outside their own 
colony by an Admiralty judge, sitting of course without a 
jury, and proceeding by the rules of the Admiralty law, 
instead of by common law. In addition, the duties were 
payable only in sterling money at London rates; the colo- 
nists, long hampered by the scarcity of coin in America, 
declared it a conspiracy to strip the country of specie. 

The purpose and not the tenor of the Stamp Act was as 
much responsible for the opposition in America as it was 
for the satisfaction in England. There can be little doubt 
that the mercantile community on either side of the Atlantic 
was responsible as much for the policy of centralization as 
for that of resistance. Both were actuated by the fear of 
bankruptcy. So long as the carrying trade between England 
and her own sugar colonies could be restricted to her own 
colonial shipping, so long as the continental colonies supplied 
the English colonies with food and necessities and compelled 
the foreign sugar colonies to divert valuable time and labor 



J 



THE I:MMEDIATE causes of the revolution 83 

from raising sugar-cane to raising food for their own mainte- 
nance, the English sugar colonies possessed a very consider- 
able economic advantage over their rivals. For the conti- 
nental colonies to supply the latter with food on the same 
terms at which they supplied the English sugar colonies 
meant the loss of this very important advantage. When, 
in addition, the New England merchants traded freely with 
Amsterdam and Hamburg and took back to America Dutch 
or German goods, the English merchants in England had 
lost just so much of their normal market. The pressure upon 
the ministry to put an end to this "robbery" was persistent, 
and, from an English point of view, entirely justifiable. 
That the repression of this illicit trade and open smuggling 
was oppression, never occurred to George III and his advisers. 
But the Boston and New York merchants, who remembered 
that the English West India Islands consumed each decade a 
smaller and smaller proportion of their produce, and furnished 
fewer and fewer of their numerous ships with full cargoes 
to London, who realized that their profits depended on their 
ability to market the whole of the colonial output some- 
where and that the only possible additional market for bulky 
and perishable goods was in the foreign West India colonies,' 
saw in these regulations nothing but a fixed design to strangle 
colonial trade and to ruin colonial merchants simply in order 

3 The Remonstrance of the Colony of Rhode Island to the Lords Com- 
missioners of Trade and Plantations against the Sugar Act of 1764 
stated that Rhode Island imported annually £120,000 of British goods 
and raised in the colony £5000 worth of goods capable of being sent to 
England, "and. as the other goods raised for exportation, will answer 
in no market but in the West Indies, it necessarily follows that the 
trade thither must be the foundation of all our commerce." Thirty 
distilleries turning molasses into rum are "the main hinge upon which 
the trade of the colony depends," and use 14,000 hogsheads of molasses 
annually, of which 11,500 come from foreign sugar plantations (of 
course in inviolation of the Navigation Acts). "The British West India 
Islands are not. nor in the nature of things ever can be, able to consume 
the produce of the said colonies." To Africa, the colony annually ex- 
ported 1800 hogsheads of rum and with the proceeds made remittances 
to England valued at £40.000. Records of the Colony of Rhode Island 
and Providence Plantations, in New England, VI, 378-383. 



84 THE RISE OF THE AIVlERICAN PEOPLE 

to increase the profits of British merchants. The fact that 
tliis trade was necessary to colonial prosperity proved to the 
Americans that the English statutes and regulations were 
exceedingly unjust, and were, therefore, illegal and unconsti- 
tutional. Parliament never could have intended to commit 
such hideous injustice; any such reading of the acts must be 
wrong. The continued insistence of the English ministers 
upon this very interpretation, the passage of further acts and 
regulations to enforce it seemed to prove only too clearly 
that England actually intended to compass the ruin of her 
own colonies. "Single acts of tyranny," wrote Jefferson 
* in the Summary View of the Bights of British America, ' ' may 

be ascribed to the accidental opinion of a day ; but a series of 
oppressions, begun at a distinguished period, and pursued 
unalterably through every change of ministers, too plainly 
prove a deliberate and systematical plan of reducing us to 
slavery." The growth of the colonies had developed by 1760 
an economic interest diametrically contrary to the interests 
of England, and over its continuance, not over its rightfulness, 
the Revolution was fought. The Americans conceived the 
economic bondage to Europe, which pressed so hardly on them, 
to be the result of the political tie which bound them to 
the mother-country; if that tie were once loosened or could 
be changed, all would be remedied. When they found it 
impossible to alter the conditions which so hampered their 
development, they determined to get rid of the political con- 
nection entirely and thus become free. 

The prompt nullification of the Stamp Act by the Ameri- 
cans only convinced George III and his advisers the more 
firmly of the necessity of such measures. They knew little 
of the commercial necessities of the continental colonists; 
still less of the actual facts about colonial self-government. 
They correctly saw that the conditions in America were 
entirely at odds with the legal and constitutional relation- 
ship between the mother-country and her colonies; they cor- 
rectly saw that if the authority of the Crown and of Parlia- 
ment was not to become a mere figment of the imagination 



THE IMMEDIATE CAUSES OF THE REVOLUTION 85 

recognition of it must be extorted from the colonies as soon 
as possible. "With the cooperation of the colonies, a magnifi- 
cent future lay before the British Empire; but until so 
anomalous a condition of affairs was changed, cooperation 
would be impossible. As "Wilson later phrased it in the 
Constitutional Convention of 1787, "The fatal maxims es- 
poused by her were that the Colonies were growing too fast 
and that their growth must be stinted [cheeked] in time." 

Accordingly, in June 1766, Townshend announced the policy 
of the ministry, "It has long been my opinion that America 
should be regulated and deprived of its militating and con- 
tradictory charters, and its royal governors, judges, and at- > 
torneys be rendered independent of the people. I there- -' 
fore expect that the present administration will, in the recess 
of Parliament, take all necessary previous steps for compass- 
ing so desirable an event." There would be "a different 
police (policy) founded on and supported by force and 
vigor." With these words ringing in their ears, the Ameri- 
cans learned of the proposed organization of a really effi- 
cient American customs service, of the imposition of duties 
on glass, painters' colors, and tea, all to make "more certain 
and adequate provision for the charge of the administration 
of justice and the support of civil government" in America, 
and to be spent by the English ministry. The low duties, 
the studiously careful taxation of nothing but luxuries, the 
excellence of the provisions for administrative efficiency, the 
fact that the Tea Acts permitted the sale of tea in America 
from 80% to 40% cheaper than in England was nothing to 
the Americans, who were, as always, furiously opposed to 
the payment of any taxes at all intended to make the Eng- 
lish officials independent of the colony, and firm in their 
opposition to the establishment of an efficient English ad- 
ministration. "Was this to be the result of the long battle 
between Massachusetts and the Crown over the Governor's 
salary? "Was ]\Iassachusetts thus tamely to surrender and 
make him independent of her legislature? Were the colo- 
nies themselves to pay the money necessary for the creation 



86 THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 

of an administration intended to destroy their prosperity 
by enforcing the Navigation Acts? The reorganization of 
the Admiralty courts, the legalization of general search-war- 
rants for smuggled goods, the new efficiency of the English 
army in the colonies only increased the dangers apprehended 
from such measures by the extent to which they rendered the 
proposed administration more efficient. 

The resistance was prompt and for the most part was a 
resort to the old habits of evasion and violence so common 
in the relations of the populace and the customs officers. 
The breaking of heads, burning in effigy, riding on rails, 
the sacking of houses, the forcible landing of goods in defi- 
ance of the revenue officers were as old as the colonies them- 
selves. Conscious of their strength, the crowds indulged in 
more striking manifestations of their determination, dancing 
round liberty-poles, burying the Stamp Act with mock 
gravity, and boycotting or threatening the English officers 
till they left the colony. There was here no organized re- 
sistance ; the participants belonged to the poorer and rougher 
elements of the populace; and their deeds were openly dep- 
recated by the colonial leaders and legislatures. In fact, 
few were anxious to do more than nullify the English acts 
or supposed that such proceedings could lead to a separation 
from the mother-country. "The ideas of people," wrote 
John Adams, ''are as various as their faces." 

There was, however, for the first time talk among the 
leaders of legal or constitutional resistance to the English 
measures and a great turning of books and consideration of 
precedents to discover what the legal relations of the colo- 
nies to England really were. Firm in their English tradi- 
tions, the Americans refused to believe that the law obligated 
them to the performance of anything actually detrimental 
to their welfare. Out of the voluminous correspondence, 
speech-making, and tract-writing, there finally appeared about 
1774, a coherent Amxerican notion of what the British Consti- 
tution was and what were the privileges of the colonies under 
it. In the writings of James Otis and of Stephen Hopkins, 



THE IMMEDIATE CAUSES OF THE REVOLUTION 87 

we find it clearly expressed, but, above all, we see it in the 
Summary View of the Rights of British America, written by 
Thomas Jefferson in 1774. 

The Americans assumed the existence of an English Con- 
stitution superior in obligation to acts of Parliament, based 
upon an original compact between the King and people and 
containing "those rights which God and the laws have given 
equally and independently to all." The British Empire con- 
sisted of England, Scotland, Ireland, Massachusetts, Virginia, 
and the rest of the colonies, all of them equal in rank, each 
provided with a legislature and an administration supreme 
within its own sphere. The King was, as Jefferson said, 
"chief magistrate of the British Empire," "the chief officer 
of the people, appointed by the laws and circumscribed with 
definite powers, to assist in working the great machine of 
government, created for their use and consequently subject 
to their superintendence." The King was of course subject 
to the Constitution; Parliament was the legislature of Eng- 
land as the General Court was the legislature of JMassachusetts 
or the General Assembly that of Virginia. Parliament pos- 
sessed by the Constitution no more right to legislate for Mas- 
sachusetts than the General Court possessed to pass laws for 
England. The right of free trade was the inalienable pos- 
session of each "part of the Empire"; the Constitution sanc- 
tioned no laws whatever on that subject, and all those passed 
by Parliament, being therefore in contravention of the Con- 
stitution, were void. 

Such notions obviously bore no relation whatever to any 
conceptions of the English constitution ever entertained in 
England. That Americans should advance what George and 
his counselors deemed ludicrous travesties as constitutional 
defenses for their extraordinary behavior, only confirmed 
the latter in their opinion of the "factious" intentions of 
the Americans. The American notions were, however, the 
logical result of the application of States' sovereignty to the 
British Empire ; and were simply a plain statement of actual 
conditions in 1774. The separate States were sovereign and 



88 THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 

recognized the King's headship of the Empire for what it 
had been, — an ornamental constitutional feature. They as- 
signed both King and Parliament purely nominal parts be- 
cause neither had ever regularly exercised any actual author- 
ity in America. But neither King nor colonist realized that 
the difficulty lay in the fact that the legal status and the 
actual condition of the colonies no longer agreed. The Eng- 
lish concluded that, because the law said so, they were still 
dependencies to be dealt with at the discretion of King and 
Parliament; the Americans assumed that the Constitution 
must have been always in force and obtained their definition 
of the Constitution from what they knew to be true about 
government in America and about the actual relations of the 
colonies to England. Both the English idea of American 
government, and the American idea of English government 
were therefore astonishing misconceptions. And each firmly 
believed in his own particular variety of misconception be- 
cause the facts of everyday life with which each was familiar 
proved its validity; each scouted the other's notions be- 
cause neither could credit the existence of such conditions 
as were claimed to be found on the other side of the Atlantic. 
How were Charles James Fox, rake and gamester, wit and 
litterateur, the stolid Farmer George, the routine-ridden Graf- 
tons and Townshends to comprehend life on the American 
frontier or to appreciate the virtues of a Washington or the 
ability of a Franklin? The personal experiences of the 
leaders had been too utterly diverse for them to comprehend 
the motives which swayed their opponents. 

Starting from such opposite premises, argument and dis- 
cussion only intensified the differences of opinion and con- 
vinced each of the other's wilful intention to falsify and 
misrepresent. The little phrase, "taxation without represen- 
tation," which soon became the decisive point of most prac- 
tical discussions, was clearly understood by each in a sense 
which made nonsense out of the other's contentions. The 
English Parliament was elected by the counties and such 
boroughs as had always had the right to send. In them, the 



THE lAIMEDIATE CAUSES OF THE REVOLUTION 89 

franchise was based upon a variety of accidental and in- 
consistent notions, completely lacking in regularity. Many 
great cities were not represented ; many rich men had no vote ; 
while tiny hamlets and barren hillsides returned two mem- 
bers to Parliament, and more than one nobleman and wealthy 
landowner returned a score. A majority of the House of 
Commons were put in their seats by about two hundred and 
fifty individuals. Thus Parliament did not contain a single 
member who represented any uniformity of qualification of 
any sort. Nor, as Edmund Burke told the Electors of Bristol, 
was that important. He was not their member and what they 
thought or wanted was naught to him; he and every other 
member sat for all England, for the men who did not vote 
and for the boroughs which sent no members, as much as for 
the few men who voted. Parliament legally represented every 
man, woman, and child in England, and whatever it did was 
law beyond appeal. Any one taxed by Parliament, was le- 
gally taxed. Such was and still is the theory of the English 
Constitution. 

In America, on the other hand, the franchise was uniform, 
though not everywhere the same; while nearly every colony 
demanded property and moral or religious qualifications, 
every man might hope to fulfil them. The apportionment in 
America was strictly according to population and was regu- 
larly changed to keep pace with its ebb and flow. There was, 
therefore, in America no idea whatever that an individual 
or a town could be vicariously represented; if the man or 
town deserved representation, it would be freely accorded. 
To say, therefore, that the colonies had a perfect right to 
representation and were in fact already represented in Parlia- 
ment, sounded to the Americans like nonsense, while the 
American claim to be taxed only by a body of men for one 
of whom he or his town had voted seemed to Englishmen 
worse than presumption. 

One bit of American logic particularly irritated the English- 
men and seemed to them most cogent proof that the Ameri- 
cans were wrong and knew it. The latter, entirely ignorant 



90 THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 

of English conditions, save of course for the better informed 
who were promptly stigmatized as Tories, kept insisting 
loudly that they were "justly entitled to like privileges and 
freedom as their fellow-subjects in Great Britain," Magna 
Carta declared against taxation without representation, and, 
despite it, Parliament, in which they were not represented, 
persisted in levying taxes. But, as William Knox keenly 
said, if they had been living in England, would they not have 
been bound by Acts of Parliament, would they not have been 
deemed fully represented? Should they claim all the rights 
of Englishmen in England and shirk their duties? Should 
they be awarded the privileges without assuming the obliga- 
tions ? 

If we start from the obviously correct notions of the legal 
relationship prevalent in England, we shall agree with George 
and his ministers that the measures they proposed were emi- 
nently just, equitable, and moderate. We shall perforce ac- 
quit them and the English people of any intention of tyran- 
nizing over the colonies, of imposing any formal or legal ob- 
ligations not binding on Englishmen in England, of demand- 
ing any type of taxes not long collected in England, of levy- 
ing sums in excess of those laid upon the English themselves. 
Constitutional arguments have, however, rarely succeeded in 
adjusting the legal and political fabric to conditions mani- 
festly antagonistic. The real issues were not constitutional 
but economic and administrative, and concerned not law but 
expediency. Did the continental colonies need a larger 
market than the English sugar colonies offered? Was it not 
most inexpedient for them to consent to taxes and regula- 
tions which proposed to enforce a policy which they believed 
certain to result in the destruction of their prosperity ? Both 
issues were old and the colonies, individually and collectively, 
had invariably answered both in the affirmative. The Kevolu- 
tion did not grow out of new issues and new claims. The 
colonies merely reaffirmed with emphasis the position they had 
already many times assumed. The justification of the 
American Revolution lies in the fact that the colonies were 



THE IMMEDIATE CAUSES OP THE REVOLUTION 91 

Strong enough to stand alone, had governed themselves suc- 
cessfully for a century and more, and could see no economic, 
ethical, or constitutional advantages in such a connection as 
the English proposed. Whatever the law was, they were in 
fact free agents, sovereign powers, able to accept or reject 
measures and policies as they thought best. The logic of 
facts was with them; the law as they honestly understood it 
supported them; they asked for nothing which their fathers 
had not in substance possessed. They were free and they 
claimed the right to make the fact clear. 



VIII 

THE ORGANIZATION OF RESISTANCE 

Armed resistance was by no means the result of a spon- 
taneous outburst of indignation from a united nation. In- 
deed, the candid student, who will read the documentary evi- 
dence with the colonial passion for States' sovereignty in his 
mind instead of the national ideals of the Federal Convention, 
will be compelled to admit, unpalatable as the fact may be, 
that the Revolution was not a national movement at all. Loy- 
alty and devotion to the States was strong, fervid, and 
freely expressed ; the determination to maintain with force, if 
necessary, each State's independence of England was un- 
questioned. But both were as old as the colonies: in 1634 
and 1664 Massachusetts had manifested precisely that same 
determination. Of national feeling in the present sense, there 
seems to have been among the people in general very little, and 
that little was manifested only by individuals. At the Stamp 
Act Congress and all other gatherings of men from more than 
one colony, the sentiment in favor of complaint was strong, 
but that in favor of united action was weak. The advocates 
of a central colonial government of some sort were listened 
to with tolerance but hardly with approval. Was not a cen- 
tral administration, robbing the individual colonies of part of 
their power and initiative, the very thing against which they 
were protesting? 

Among the colonial leaders a strong party counseled de- 
lay. Franklin pointed at the rapid growth of the colonies in 
wealth and population since 1760 and predicted that if war 
could be averted for another decade or two the very growth 
of the colonies would totally change English policy. "Our 
security lies in our growing strength, England will soon value 

92 



THE ORGANIZATION OF RESISTANCE 93 

our friendship for it." "Bear England's infirmities a little 
and gradually they will come to treat us well." The com- 
mercial relations with England were too valuable and too 
necessary to the prosperity of the colonies to risk their rupture 
by a war. ' * England is worth preserving and her safety may 
in a large degree depend upon ourselves. Hence she must 
soon grant us all." Nor was actual fighting necessary. The 
English were prevented by circumstances too fundamental ever 
to be changed from exercising a control over the colonies suf- 
ficiently effective to rob them of the actual independence 
which had so long been theirs. George III and his ministers 
must soon realize how insuperable a barrier the width of the 
Atlantic actually was. In fact, the belief was very general 
before 1775 that organized resistance would not be necessary. 
It is hard for us to remember that in 1768 most colonists 
felt for "The King" fervent loyalty, which was not infre- 
quently coupled to an active dislike for George III and which 
has been often confused with a lack of patriotism to their 
own country. They still thought as their fathers had, and 
saw not the slightest incompatibility between a desire to cling 
to the mother-country as long as possible and a firm determi- 
nation to disobey all rules and regulations which they did not 
approve. They saw the familiar aspects of the old colonial 
quarrels with England, realized that their fathers had found 
petitions, vigorous protests, and a nullification of the ob- 
jectionable acts by passive resistance invariably effective, and 
they were naturally unwilling to go further without more 
serious provocation. England had hitherto never done any- 
thing more than insist, and, if they vigorously wrote and 
talked, they might in the meantime have their own way. The 
landing of troops at New York in 1765 and at Boston three 
years later somewhat shook their complaisance, but as the 
months passed by and found the trade with the foreign West 
India Islands still brisk and profitable, as the obnoxious new 
acts were promptly repealed, and the older ones not enforced, 
the average man saw no need for action. 

In John Dickinson's Farmer's Letters published in 1768 



94 THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 

we find those ideas which seem to have most nearly expressed 
the views of the vast majority of the people. Of the unjusti- 
fiability of English policy, he has no doubt; but he cannot 
think it represents the mature opinion of King and people. 
''I cannot yet believe they will be cruel or unjust. . . . Let 
us complain . . . but let our complaint speak . . . the lan- 
guage of affliction and veneration. ' ' He dilated upon the value 
and importance of England to the colonies: *'The prosperity 
of these provinces is founded in their dependence on Great 
Britain;" the obvious economic dependence of America upon 
England does not seem to him to prove necessarily the desira- 
bility of the English interpretation of the political bond, but 
merely the advisability of caution, patience, forbearance. In 
fact, he denied that a new issue was being thrust upon the 
colonists, or that other measures than passive resistance and 
nullification would be necessary to meet the crisis. The im- 
portance of correctly estimating the attitude of Dickinson and 
his numerous supporters can hardly be exaggerated, and we 
must above all beware of assuming that they approved of' 
English policy or were any less patriotic in their attachment 
to their States than were the adherents of the War party, or 
were any less determined to resist in the eventuality of the 
failure of compromise. Such motives held the vast majority 
of the population inactive throughout the war, and led to the 
prompt formation after Bunker Hill of a strong peace party, 
opposed to the war not because it was wrong, but because it 
was unnecessary. 

Actual resistance previous to 1775 was, on the whole, indi- 
vidualistic and sporadic, and had no close connection that can 
now be traced with the later movements for armed organized 
resistance or for independence. The cases which furnished 
Otis and Henry with the texts for their famous speeches on 
the Writs of Assistance in 1761 and on the Parsons' Cause in 
1763 were essentially local and the effect of the speeches less 
general than has usually been supposed. Neither led to open 
resistance. The violent demonstrations around Boston in op- 
position to the Stamp Act and to the Townshend Acts were 



THE ORGANIZATION OF RESISTANCE 95 

for the most part the work of mobs, whose actions were de- 
cried and discountenanced by the leaders. A press gang went 
ashore in Boston and had a fight with the crowd. The revenue 
officers who attempted to inspect Hancock's sloop, the 
Liberty, were locked up by the crew, who landed the cargo 
and made false entries in the books at the customs house. 
The subsequent seizure of the vessel brought out the old Boston 
gang, which had long been accustomed to oppose the revenue 
officers, and which sacked the houses of the inspector and con- 
troller of customs in most approved fashion. A cargo of wine 
was landed at' night in March 1768 and escorted through the 
streets by forty men armed with bludgeons. At Providence a 
customs officer was tarred and feathered, and at Newport a 
revenue cutter was burned at the dock. Some years later a 
body of men went down Providence harbor in row boats and 
burned the revenue cutter Gaspee which was aground on the 
mud flats. Such "opposition" was pretty common but was 
not essentially different either in purpose or degree from the 
violence offered to the revenue officers in America ever since 
the days of John Randolph, or from that which the English 
revenue officers had to contend with at the same epoch in 
England and Ireland. Certainly, these brawls were not gen- 
erally considered at the time to be steps towards independence 
or even as the first events in armed resistance. 

There was also a great deal of violence growing out of the 
continually strained relations between the debtor and creditor 
classes of the community. Of these cases, that of the North 
Carolina Regulators in 1770 is thoroughly characteristic. A 
considerable body of men, armed with clubs, attended the 
session of the Superior Court and demanded from judge and 
attorneys, "justice" in the decision of their cases, meaning 
apparently a decision in their favor. A good many lawyers 
were badly beaten ; several gentlemen of property (the cred- 
itors who were trjdng to collect their debts) were chased out 
of town, and the Judge "took an opportunity," as he wrote 
the Governor, of making his escape "by a back way." This 
same determination to prevent the collection of debts and the 



96 THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 

foreclosure of mortgages by interfering with the sittings of 
the courts was common before the Kevolution, continued 
throughout the war, and finally reached its climax in the very 
general movement against the creditor class which was one 
of the most prominent features of the Critical Period. Such 
demonstrations had vital results in hastening the formation of 
strong State governments, and, in particular, in producing 
sentiment in favor of the strong national government advo- 
cated by the Constitutional Convention of 1787, but they were 
not primarily directed against England nor against her offi- 
cials or acts. 

Inflammatory speeches and articles became common after 
1765 and people talked energetically about "liberty" and "in- 
dependence." The lofty appeals of the leaders constitute a 
distinct feature of these years, but it is sufficiently clear that 
their words in most cases fell on deaf ears. The non-importa- 
tion agreements of 1767 and 1768 roused more general fervor 
than anything else, and the demand from England for the 
rescinding of the Massachusetts Circular Letter of 1768 
caused a most exciting debate in the Massachusetts Assembly 
in which Otis compared the colonists to Pym and Cromwell 
and predicted that England would lose America unless the 
Acts were repealed. The Assembly was carried away by en- 
thusiasm and voted, 92 to 17, not to rescind the letter. They 
resolved that the letter was modest and innocent, respectful 
to Parliament and dutiful to the King! The Governor next 
day dissolved the legislature. Throughout the colonies, the 
sensation was profound. Massachusetts had openly defied the 
Crown. It was just the time when the famous "No. 45" of 
[Wilkes's North Briton was so conspicuous in the agitation for 
liberty of press in England; "92" and "45" became talis- 
manic numbers : 92 patriots drank 45 toasts ; 45 candles were 
lighted and 92 cheers given ; 92 Sons of Liberty set up a pole 
45 feet high. The colonies generally resolved to support 
Boston, where the enthusiasm ran so high at a mass meeting 
that Cooper and Samuel Adams declared it the most glorious 
day they had ever seen. At this juncture, the troops were 



THE ORGANIZATION OF RESISTANCE 97 

ordered to Boston, and, as in 1634 and 1664, the TowTi-meet- 
ing voted "at the utmost peril of their lives and fortunes, 
(to) maintain and defend their rights, liberties, privileges, 
and immunities. ' ' They ordered a day of fasting and prayer, 
and resolved to provide themselves with arms for fear of war 
with France ! 

Everything except a truly revolutionary spirit had mani- 
fested itself : the traditional hatred of the water front for the 
press-gang, the revenue officers, and the soldiery; the tradi- 
tional opposition to an efficient executive; the war of debtor 
against creditor. But this was not revolution. Resistance 
was organized and the Revolution really foisted upon a reluc- 
tant people by the work of Samuel Adams and his Committees 
of Correspondence. Such committees were in themselves old 
and premised merely the cooperation in a common cause of 
some few towns around Boston, whose leaders kept up an in- 
defatigable correspondence with individuals elsewhere. In 
1763, self-constituted, unauthorized committees sprang into 
being in many places and began corresponding with each 
other to secure an interchange of sentiments and, if possible, 
an agreement. None of them had any particular organiza- 
tion, or assumed executive or directive powers. Most of them 
lasted but a short while, and even in Massachusetts there was 
a constant succession of committees rather than one committee 
with a permanent personnel. Indeed, by 1772, no definite re- 
sults of any sort were visible. * * The dispute between the king- 
dom and the colonies," declared the Massachusetts Gazette, 
"ceases everywhere except in this province." "I shall not 
fail to exert myself," wrote a warm patriot in Plymouth to 
Adams, ' ' to have as many towns as possible meet, but fear the 
bigger part of them will not. They are dead ; and the dead 
can't be raised without a miracle." This Adams did not be- 
lieve, yet even he could not but admit that "the people are at 
present hushed into silence. ' ' His cousin, John Adams, wrote : 
"They are still and quiet at the South and at New York they 
laugh at us." Hardly a year before Bunker Hill, he wrote: 
"I am of the same opinion that I have been for years, that 



98 THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 

there is not spirit enough on either side to bring the question 
to a complete decision. . . . Our children may see revolutions 
and be concerned and active in effecting them, of which we 
can form no conception." There was, indeed, no general feel- 
ing in favor of resistance in 1772, and, until Bunker Hill was 
fought, not even the leaders dared to believe the colonies would 
resist. 

Samuel Adams and those about him, however, did not lose 
heart. They had long been prominent in Boston affairs, had 
usually controlled the town-meeting, and were well acquainted 
with the leading spirits of the surrounding towns. Their plan 
was bold : " I wish we could rouse the continent, ' ' wrote 
Adams. Still, he dared not hope for the reality: "If our de- 
sign (for committees) succeeds, there will be an apparent union 
of sentiments among the people of this province, which may 
spread through the continent." Clearly, no general spirit of 
armed resistance was apparent to him in 1772. In November 
of that year, Adams and his supporters succeeded finally in 
carrying a vote by a very narrow majority through a thinly- 
attended Boston town-meeting for the appointment of a com- 
mittee to correspond with other towns and "state the rights 
of the colonies." Thus did the men who really began the 
Revolution obtain a small grant of authority from their timor- 
ous and grudging supporters. Most of the members of this 
Boston Committee, which set the torch to the bonfire, are little 
known, and outside of Adams, Otis, Warren, and Quincy, were 
not men of the first ability nor of social standing or wealth. 
John Adams, Faneuil, Hancock, Gerry, Paine, as yet declined 
to countenance so radical a step. The Tories scoffed at the 
Sons of Belial who came together and asked each other, * ' What 
can we lose ? Peradventure by our craft we may gain some- 
thing." "And so Samuel, the Publican (Adams) and Wil- 
liam, the Scribe (Cooper) . . . with other the sons of Belial 
set themselves to oppose Francis, (Bernard) the Governor, 
. . . and drew much people after them and the land was dis- 
quieted." Within a few months, the Committee had clearly 
proved the existence in a good many towns of a considerable 



THE ORGANIZATION" OF RESISTANCE 99 

number of men ready to resist, and, on the strength of that, se- 
cured a much more definite grant of authority from the Boston 
Town-meeting. 

But the movement lacked numbers and needed an oppor- 
tunity to rouse the people by some dramatic act of defiance. 
In 1770, an attempt of the roughs of the water-front to "bait" 
the redcoats had resulted in a scattered involuntary fire from 
the comrades of the men assaulted. There is no reason to be- 
lieve that the affair was anything more than one of the ordi- 
nary rows then common in garrison towns ; but Adams and his 
ilk put great pressure on the governor to remove the troops 
and utilized the funeral of those killed for a tremendous 
demonstration. Sober second thought told the Bostonians that 
the soldiers were innocent, but Adams and his friends seized 
upon the "Massacre" as the first blood spilt in the war they 
were predicting and held services of commemoration which 
naturally became the occasion for inflammatory denunciations 
of English rule. 

"When, however, came from England news of the Tea Act 
of 1773 and the determination of the ministry to make the fate 
of the cargoes consigned to the four principal ports a test 
of the spirit of the colonies, Adams realized that the golden 
opportunity was at hand. A general grievance had been pro- 
vided which by a miracle enabled Adams to put behind his 
new plea for resistance to England the old established habit 
of eluding the Navigation Acts. The campaign against the tea 
was worked up by the various committees with the greatest as- 
siduity in newspapers, meetings, and alehouses, and the coun- 
try stre-wn with placards. The consignees in Charleston, S. 
C, resigned at the request of a public meeting. But the con- 
signees in Boston refused to resign. The Town-meeting voted 
executive power into the hands of the Committee of Corre- 
spondence, which called in the committees of the neighboring 
towns, and sat "like a little senate," wrote the disgusted 
Hutchinson. The tea-ships arrived on November 28, 1773, and, 
after every expedient to have them sent back or to prevent 
the landing of the tea had failed, the Committee called a great 



100 THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 

meeting to take action. Opposition to violent measures was 
expected and in case the meeting refused to authorize the 
destruction of the tea, a large band of men, whose identity is 
still unknown, were ready, disguised as Indians, to take mat- 
ters into their own hands. After a long and stormy session 
had proved the opposition too strong, the signal was given; 
the ' ' Indians ' ' rushed out of the warehouse in which they were 
concealed, whooping as they hurried toward the harbor. The 
audience at the meeting and a large part of the population 
who were not at the meeting rushed after them, and from 
wharves and warehouses, passively watched the "Indians," 
silently but rapidly, dump the tea into the harbor and dis- 
appear. 

As a demonstration, the Tea Party was an overwhelming 
success and produced precisely that impression of organized, 
concerted, popular action which Adams had long been most 
anxious to give. The identity of the opposition of the years 
1760 to 1772 with the older phase to which the English had 
long since become accustomed had effectually concealed from 
them what had been slowly coming to a head in America. 
The passivity of the great majority of the people, the lack of 
united action and of concerted effort, of numbers and of educa- 
tion and wealth among the members of the Committees of 
Correspondence had very naturally led the King, the ministry, 
the mercantile and educated classes in England to conclude 
that the movement was the work of a small faction of radicals, 
whose stand was disapproved by the vast majority of the peo- 
ple. That the vast majority of the American people could 
heartily disagree with Samuel Adams and yet even more ve- 
hemently disagree with himself, seems never to have occurred 
to George III. The English, in fact, greatly exaggerated the 
numbers of their own supporters in America and belittled the 
extent of the opposition to them. They supposed, as it is 
rapidly becoming the fashion to assume now, that every man 
not in favor of armed resistance was a Tory. From the clear 
evidence of colonial jealousies, they concluded that active and 
efficient cooperation between the colonies was out of the ques- 



THE ORGANIZATION OF RESISTANCE 101 

tion. The reception accorded the tea rudely shook this com- 
placency. George III declared that act a subversion of the 
Constitution ; Lord North deemed it the culmiriation of rioting 
and confusion, and Parliament solemnly voted it actual re- 
bellion. Indeed, the English at last saw that the Americans 
objected to their acts and taxes, not because they were un- 
just, but because the Americans intended never to recognize 
any such relationship to England as those acts and taxes as- 
sumed to exist. 

To take no action was to lose the colonies without an effort 
for their retention, to sanction a revolution. Tyranny was 
not to the taste of George III; but a supine surrender of 
what he fully believed were the rights of Empire was as little 
to his liking. The intentions of some Americans were clear, 
but he could not yet learn that more than a handful had taken 
any decided stand or that the colonies were ready to act to- 
gether. General Gage returned from America and privately 
assured him that ' ' they will be lions whilst we are lambs ; but 
if we take the resolute part, they will undoubtedly prove very 
meek." The repeal of the Stamp Act, concluded the King, 
"was a fatal compliance." So, in the Coercive Acts of 1774, 
England took "the resolute part," closed the Port of Boston 
to injure its trade ; annulled the ]\Iassachusetts Charter and in- 
stituted government by men appointed from England; pro- 
vided for the trial in England of men accused of treason, and 
erected a new province of Quebec that robbed all the colonies 
of the lands west of the Alleghenies whose value they had just 
come to realize. ' ' The die is now cast, ' ' wrote George to Lord 
North, ' ' the Colonies must either submit or triumph. ' ' 

Had Samuel Adams himself dictated the English measures, 
he could not have devised any better calculated to rouse the in- 
different and lukewarm to the necessity for action or which 
would have given him and his colleagues greater prestige and 
authority. He made excellent use of the varied motives now 
working in his favor: strong State patriotism, love of self- 
government, and belief in States' sovereignty, even if it in- 
volved a breach with England ; the hatred of the Boston mob 



102 THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 

for the troops quartefied there; the traditional opposition to 
the revenue ojBfieers; the traditional determination not to pay 
enough money to the English officers to render them independ- 
ent of the colony. The Boston Committee had promptly arro- 
gated to itself in 1773 executive powers and now began in 1774 
a persistent attempt to create and mold public opinion, and 
to concert and execute measures of resistance. It collected 
powder, lead, and muskets; instituted companies of minute- 
men, who drilled more or less regularly; and appointed 
watchers and messengers to carry word of the movement of 
troops to the districts threatened. With the annulling of the 
old Charter, the Boston Committee became the only body 
capable of acting with consent of the people without directly 
exposing all its members to the penalty of high treason. It 
openly took upon itself the government of the State, the sup- 
plying of Boston with provisions, local administration, and 
the organization of revolt. 

Nothing remained but to convince the men around Boston 
that the only course left them was open resistance. Parlia- 
ment furnished it in the Act for the exclusicm of the colonies 
from the Newfoundland Fisheries. Salt cod was the chief 
staple of New England 's trade with the rest of the world, and, 
if they were excluded from the principal source of supply, the 
New England colonies would be ruined whether the foreign 
sugar islands were open or closed to ciolonial trade. The news 
of this Act arrived on April 2, 1775, and Adams and his fol- 
lowers at once saw that the decisive factor had appeared and 
was in their favor. From that moment, they determined to 
force the issue, confident that Massachusetts would support 
them. In full consciousness of the strength and excellence of 
the new organization, rather than in any spirit of prophesy, 
Joseph Warren wrote on April 3, 1775, "America must and 
will be free. The contest may be severe; the end will be 
glorious. We would not boast, but we think, united and pre- 
pared as we are, we have no reason to doubt of success. ' ' 

General Gage soon provided an admirable opportunity for 
a demonstration. Despite the activity of Adams and his Com- 



THE ORGANIZATION OF RESISTANCE 103 

mittees, there were few places in New England and few in 
the other colonies where their adherents were really in the 
majority and determined to fight. There were still fewer 
places where any preparations for armed resistance had been 
actually made. But along the highroad from Boston to Con- 
cord, the shire town of Middlesex County, and the market 
town for the whole district around Boston, were a series of 
towns where Adams's propaganda had met the most en- 
thusiastic response of any place in America. An overwhelm- 
ing majority of the men were determined to fight, had been 
organized into companies and provided with arms, a consider- 
able store of which, with powder and lead, had been collected 
at Concord. In the previous February the British had seized 
cannon at Salem; in March had captured cartridges and can- 
non-balls that were being smuggled into Boston in candle-boxes 
and hay-wagons; and though fights with the populace were 
averted by the narrowest of margins, the fact was beyond dis- 
pute that no outbreak had taken place. But when General 
Gage determined to send his troops to Concord on the night 
of April 18, to seize the stores collected there, he thrust his 
men into the one place in all America where adequate prepara- 
tions for their reception had been made. 

The alarm was spread by the people themselves and reached 
Lexington and Concord far ahead of the messengers, of whom 
only John Dawes reached Concord. At two in the morning, 
more than a hundred minute-men were waiting on Lexington 
Common, but no one came, the night was cold, and they dis- 
persed. At three the alarm was in Concord. Five o'clock 
found about a hundred minute-men, armed with muskets, 
assembled again on Lexington Common and they soon saw 
the red-coated column approaching. Both they and the Eng- 
lish seem to have been somewhat non-plussed, and some mo- 
ments passed in indecision ; but a company of the red-coats 
was detached from the column, which, without waiting, started 
for Concord. The company deployed on the green and fired a 
volley at the minute-men, who returned a few scattered shots 
and then dispersed, carrying their wounded. The company 



104 THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 

fell back into the column and the British marched on to Con- 
cord, where they met an unexpectedly stout resistance. The 
minute-men actually drove back into town a small detach- 
ment who were guarding a bridge, and followed them with a 
persistence that astonished the British. After some powder 
and shot had been destroyed, the British officers, who had 
been strictly ordered not to rouse the country, determined to 
return to Boston. A large body of Americans returned with 
them, annoying them with a deadly flanking fire from the 
little hillsides fringing the Boston road, but not offering 
enough resistance to draw upon them an attack in force. 
The British column, we now know, voluntarily returned in 
obedience to orders; the minute-men could not have driven 
them from the field had they chosen to stand their ground; 
but the minute-men and the countryside deemed it a retreat 
before superior force. The effect was incalculable; recruits 
poured into the camp in the Cambridge marshes; the other 
New England States promptly started their militia for Boston. 
Most of the accounts which spread through the colonies were 
false, but glorious; — the British army had been driven into 
Boston and was there besieged ! The news ' ' will plead with 
all America," wrote Mrs. John Adams in May, ''with more 
irresistible persuasion than angels trumpet- tongued. " 

The more completely to invest Boston, the project was 
adopted by the patriots of erecting a redoubt upon the high- 
est part of Charlestown Hill, the whole of which was then 
known as Bunker 's Hill. On the sixteenth of June, a body of 
several hundred men under Colonel Prescott marched across 
Charlestown Neck and began a redoubt on the lower of the 
two hills, and that nearer the water, since called Breed's Hill. 
From a military point of view, the error was great : the Eng- 
lish fleet, anchored off the Neck, could have cut off their re- 
treat and compelled their surrender to the regiments, who 
could easily have been landed in the rear of the entrenchment, 
which was wholly commanded by the hill on which the monu- 
ment now stands. All this was seen by Gage and Howe, but 
was cast aside in favor of a demonstration. They would leuad 



THE ORGANIZATION OF RESISTANCE 105 

in front of the redoubt and rail fence stuffed with hay, and 
show the farmers and the colonies in general that resistance 
was hopeless even when the British voluntarily gave the farm- 
ers every possible advantage. Up the slope, with flags fly- 
ing, went the British line; down again in haste it came. 
Twice the assault failed, and then was successful largely be- 
cause the farmers, finding their ammunition low, began to 
retreat. They were allowed to escape unmolested by the as- 
tonished regulars. The country was electrified. The most 
diverse reports went broadcast about the numbers engaged, 
the casualties, and the narrative of the action. Many blamed 
the patriots for fighting at all. John Adams accurately 
summed up contemporary opinion: "Considering all the dis- 
advantages under which they fought they really exhibited 
prodigies of valour. ' ' But Bunker Hill, from a military point 
of view a crushing defeat for the Americans, was a moral vic- 
tory of the first importance. A miracle had happened: — the 
farmers had stood their ground, unabashed by the line of red- 
coats. Bunker Hill "instantly convinced us," wrote Ezra 
Stiles, President of Yale College, "and for the first time con- 
vinced Britons themselves that Americans both would and 
could fight with great effect. ' ' 



( IX 

FIRST ATTEMPTS AT PERMANENT ORGANIZATION 

The hostilities at Lexington and at Bunker Hill had been the 
work of the Committees of Correspondence and their adlier- 
ents, and not that of a regularly constituted State or local 
government, and, even if the people of Massachusetts did 
finally accept responsibility for what had been done, nothing 
was clearer to the leaders in the other colonies than that they 
themselves had not been and would not be in any way obli- 
gated even by such action. Their relations to Massachusetts, 
to each other, and to England were still to be decided by such 
notions of law and expediency as careful consideration 
should show to be important. At the same time, the strong 
sentiment in favor of supporting the gallant stand of the 
Massachusetts men caused the leaders throughout America 
promptly to begin the thorough discussion of ways, means, 
and methods. 

They soon found themselves seriously at odds over the 
most expedient method of securing English recognition of 
American claims. One party declared war inexpedient and 
a settlement agreeable to America easily obtainable by negoti- 
ation and passive resistance, while their opponents insisted 
upon armed resistance as the only means of convincing Eng- 
land of the generality and seriousness of American opposi- 
tion. The former and larger party stood upon familiar 
colonial ground and espoused methods which had long been 
successful, and to it naturally flocked the conservatives and 
the timid, afraid of compromising themselves and of thus 
endangering their lives or property. Their opponents insisted 
that some sort of legalization of what had been done by the 
institution of a definite revolutionary organization was im- 

106 



FIRST ATTEMPTS AT PERMANENT ORGANIZATION 107 

perative, not only to make resistance effective, but to give the 
movement a legal status which would enable its supporters to 
claim the rights of belligerents and permit them to recruit 
their ranks from those whom the fears of confiscation and exe- 
cution would otherwise hold passive. The anxiety of the very 
men who had fought at Lexington to free themselves of lia- 
bility by denying that they had ''resisted" at all warned 
Adams and his friends of what was otherwise to be expected 
even from the boldest. Indeed, without assuming a definite 
object of some kind for which to fight, without in some way 
defining their future legal relations to England and to each 
other, it was clear that no general cooperation of colonies or 
individuals was to be expected. It was highly probable that, 
unless some public pledges sufficiently definite to make diffi- 
cult the desertion of the common cause were soon obtained, 
some States, if not the majority, would make their peace with 
England individually and leave the few to bear the brunt of 
the mother-country's displeasure.^ The greatest obstacle in 
the way of resistance soon proved to be the exceedingly di- 
vergent notions about the future relations of the various 
States in America to each other, the sort of cooperation 
needed, the kind of central administration required. 

The obvious inadequacy of the existing arrangements, ad- 
ministrative and military, caused at once the greatest per- 
plexity and concern. The committees of correspondence, 
which were now pretty generally spread throughout the 
country, were at most empowered only to investigate, corre- 
spond, and suggest, and could not claim to have been author- 
ized by local or State governments to commence a revolution. 
In several colonies, they had been unable to secure any open 
recognition at all and were voluntary associations of men, en- 
tirely extra-legal, whose organization would certainly not con- 
fer upon them or their abettors the belligerent status so ob- 
viously desirable. In Massachusetts, to be sure, the rescind- 
ing of the colonial charter had furnished the Boston Com- 

1 The Journals of the Continental Congress and Force's American 
Archives are full of material on this point. 



108 THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 

mittee of Correspondence an opportunity to oppose the British 
officials with the open approval of the populace, and this 
Adams had interpreted as a legalization of the Committee's 
work. The English government would certainly not agree 
with him on that point, and it was by no means sure that the 
people of Boston would if their movement failed of instant 
success and prompt support elsewhere. Outside Massachu- 
setts, the authorities of the several States had clung to their 
charters and had held carefully aloof from the committees and 
their propaganda.- Nor did the people of the colonies in 
general manifest clearly any desire for independence of Eng- 
land. "Until after the rejection of the second petition of 
Congress in 1775," wrote John Jay, "I never heard an Ameri- 
can of any class or any description express a wish for the 
independence of the colonies." Not only was there in June 
1775, no definite State or national organization pledged to op- 
position to England, which could not easily have been dis- 
owned, but there was apparent no sentiment in favor of the 
creation of such a body or bodies. 

The Continental Congress could not claim any such posi- 
tion. It represented the radical elements in the various States 
rather than the organized governments. Indeed, many of the 
delegates, both in 1774 and 1775, had been appointed by the 
committees of correspondence without even a pretense of elec- 
tion by the people. Some States were not represented at all, 
and others were only partially represented. The Congress 
was in truth a body of ambassadors from confessedly extra- 
legal associations and possessed no status which the States in 
America or the Crown in England would in any way be com- 
pelled to recognize. Further, it was by no means certain that 
the majority of Americans favored a central organization of 
any kind.^ 

2 This whole subject has been treated by Agnes Hunt, Provincial Com- 
mittees of Safety. Much evidence is in Force's American Archives, 

3 The student should in particular read the anxious debates in Con- 
gress in the fall of 1775 and spring of 1776 upon the formation of a 
new government and ilote the direct testimony of the reluctance of the 
people to act. Most of the authorizations to members of Congress in 



FIRST ATTEMPTS AT PERMANENT ORGANIZATION 109 

WHat Lexin^on and Bunker Hill had not been able to ac- 
complish was consummated by the rejection of the Olive 
Branch Petition by George III in the summer of 1775, and 
after the arrival of the news there was in the fall of 1775 a 
very general acquiescence in or tacit acceptance of the revolu- 
tionary organization already in existence, though the leaders 
were keenly alive to the fact that this sort of recognition 
pledged neither States nor individuals to the continuance of 
the war. New executive officers were chosen in Massachusetts 
in defiance of the English statute of 1774; but in most States 
the actual business of the country was still transacted through 
the colonial governmental structure. If the voice had become 
the voice of Jacob, the hands were still those of Esau. The 
nearly universal acceptance of the members of Congress in 
Philadelphia by the people or the popular choice of new mem- 
bers soon gave that body a quasi-legal status as a congress of 
ambassadors and enabled it to act with something approach- 
ing legality or regularity as a central organ of some inde- 
scribably vague variety. The appointment of Washington as 
Commander-in-Chief of the army at Boston in July 1775, and 
the presence of various officers and regiments from several 
States in that army was more definite evidence of coopera- 
tion between the States for resistance, and enabled Congress 
to claim in the fall of 1775 support in nearly all sections of 
the country. But no definite general action had been taken; 
no formal sanction of resistance had been given by States or 
people. Their approval referred rather to past than to future 
action. The people in the States expected to take further 
action when they thought it necessary ; the States intended to 
reserve their approval of further resistance and the legaliza- 
tion of cooperation until they should make up their several 
minds; they reserved complete right to recall their citizens 
from the army or from Congress whenever they should deem it 
necessary. 

This uncertainty crippled no branch of the revolutionary 

favor of independence carefully omitted instructions on the question 
of further organization. 



110 THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 

fabric as much as it did the Congress. In the nature of 
things, the latter possessed no definite grant of authority. 
Above all, it must not alienate any section of its supporters, 
for nothing would so quickly ruin the movement as the open 
defection of some strong State. Congress must, therefore, 
find the definition of its powers in the instructions of its mem- 
bers rather than in the needs of the moment. It must 
somehow steer the middle course between the radicals, who 
threatened to leave the movement if more was not promptly 
done, and the conservatives who threatened to desert if one 
step more was taken. The Congress must follow rather than 
lead; it must do what seemed likely to be approved rather 
than what was expedient or necessary.* The administrative 
difficulties of the Kevolution must be more thoroughly under- 
stood if we are to realize how splendid an achievement our 
independence is. 

The difficulties in the way of permanent cooperation seemed 
to contemporaries almost insurmountable, and attracted more 
attention abroad than any single aspect of the situation. The 
distances sundering the States had effectually prevented rapid 
or frequent communication and had produced almost as great 

* Every page of the Journals of Congress proves only too clearly the 
truth of this statement. See, for instance, the attempt to deal with 
the pressing problem of deserters in Feb. 1777, and the obvious inade- 
quacy of the resolve passed to solve the difficulty as they saw it. "An 
obstinate partiality to the habits and customs of one part of this con- 
tinent has predominated in the public councils and too little attention 
has been paid to others. ... It has been my fate to make an inef- 
fectual opposition [in Congress] to all short enlistments, to colonial 
[i. e., State! appointment of officers and to many other measures, which 
I thought pregnant with mischief; but these things either suited with 
the genius and habits or squared with the interests of Some States, 
that had sufficient influence to prevail [in Congress] and nothing is 
now left but to extricate ourselves as we'll as we can." Robert Morris 
to Washington, Dec. 23, 1776. MS. letter, quoted in Sparks's Washing- 
ton's Writings, IV, 237, note. 

"It is a fact too notorious to be concealed that C[ongress] is rent 
by party — that much business of a trifling nature and personal concern- 
ment withdraw their attention from matters of great national moment 
at this critical period." Washington to Mason, March 27, 1779. Wash- 
ington's Writings, Ford's ed., VII, 383. 



FIRST ATTEMPTS AT PERMANENT ORGANIZATION 111 

a lack of acquaintance between parts of America as between 
America and England. Indeed, many more Americans had 
been in London than had traveled in the colonies, and the 
constant receipt of letters, papers, and books from the mother- 
country had kept each colony more keenly aware of what went 
on in England than it was of what happened in its own vi- 
cinity. In fact, the States were contiguous only on paper and 
were really separated by great stretches of wilderness, sowed 
wdth rivers and bogs and almost devoid of roads. Actually, 
they were independent of each other as well as of England, 
and there was not as yet sufficient pressure of circumstances 
to make cooperation seem imperative rather than merely desir- 
able. The possibilities of agreement, moreover, seemed slight. 
To most Americans, the superficial differences of customs and 
religion w^ere more striking than were the great fundamental 
similarities which attracted the attention of the leaders and 
gave them confidence in the ultimate outcome. New England 
was Congregationalist, Virginia Episcopalian, Pennsylvania 
Quaker; and the religious disputes, in particular those grow- 
ing out of the threatened severance of relations with the 
Church of England in case the States should attempt actual 
independence of the mother-country, were serious obstacles 
for a time in the way of a permanent organization. The 
old traditional disputes had been revived: Pennsylvania and 
^Maryland, Maryland and Virginia, New Jersey and New 
York, Rhode Island and IMassachusetts, South Carolina and 
Georgia had long cherished grievances against each other and 
now lost no opportunity to pursue the quarrel. Then, a cen- 
tury of development had allowed certain colonies to outstrip 
the others in size and wealth; had created the jealousies be- 
tween the large and small States which were in 1787 so sig- 
nificant. All these differences had long prevented the adop- 
tion of any scheme of central government in colonial America 
and they seemed still to present almost insuperable obstacles 
to permanent cooperation. 

They were, however, less serious than the social differ- 
ences. The fact that the Atlantic coast was everywhere ac- 



112 THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 

cessible from the sea and was well-furnished with deep par- 
allel rivers had early produced a pretty general settlement 
of the coast regions and the lower reaches of the rivers all 
along the seaboard. Subsequent development had pushed 
this long thin line of settlement westward, until there ex- 
isted in 1776 a fringe of thoroughly established towns and 
counties along the coast and a wider belt inland where con- 
ditions were still those of the frontier. Between the two 
districts there had always been a certain antagonism, based 
on the inevitable dependence of the interior upon the coast 
for the sale of its own produce and for its supplies of salt 
and manufactured goods. The frontier, being therefore 
nearly always in debt to the coast, resented keenly the lat- 
ter 's economic position and assumption of social superiority. 
Thus developed the distinction between the settled communi- 
ties and the frontier, between the East and the West, be- 
tween the creditor and debtor communities, which is one of 
the most fundamental lines in American life and one of the 
oldest. 

At this time, however, it was less a dividing line between 
States than a cleft in every State, tending to create social 
distinctions and foment internal discord. It tended to coin- 
cide in each State with the line of rich and poor, creditor 
and debtor, and made it difficult to institute strong govern- 
ment in the States themselves; and particularly stood in the 
way of the adhesion of the States as a whole to any scheme 
of strong central government, because of the determination 
of the debtors to oppose the development of governmental 
machinery likely to facilitate the collection of debts. The 
Revolution was not only a war between England and Amer- 
ica, not only a struggle of political parties in both countries, 
but a civil war in America, some of whose aspects were those 
of a social war of classes. To this many of the most char- 
acteristic manifestations of the Revolution were partially due 
— the early mob violence, the opposition to English adminis- 
tration, the treatment of the Loyalists. To it are due most 
of the aspects of the critical years just previous to the adop- 



FIRST ATTEMPTS AT PERMANENT ORGANIZATION 113 

tion of the Constitution. Like every great event in his- 
tory, the Revolution was a struggle of many motives and many 
interests, and was concerned not only with the authority of 
England over America, but with the relations of Americans 
to each other in the several States and in the central govern- 
ment. 

At just this juncture, when in the winter of 1775-76 every- 
thing hung in the balance, when energetic united action 
seemed improbable, and defeat for Massachusetts unless 
promptly supported seemed certain, the union between the 
revolutionary movement and the war between debtor and 
creditor gave a mighty impulse to open resistance by secur- 
ing the adhesion of large numbers of men who had hitherto 
held aloof. Naturally enough, among the more adventurous 
and radical spirits, who had at first flocked to the commit- 
tees, had been men who had not so much to lose that fears 
of confiscation weighed heavily upon them. A farmer could 
easily enough retrieve the loss of his acres by moving on 
and taking up a new claim. The men who had held back had 
been not only the conservatives, but the merchants and the 
creditor class, in general men who were likely to lose heavily 
by the interference of the outbreak of hostilities vrith the 
regularity of trade. Such an alignment of debtor and cred- 
itor was natural enough and has always appeared at the be- 
ginning of great wars. It was probably as little in evidence 
during the Revolution as in any period of change in his- 
tory, but it certainly played a significant part. Indeed, so 
largely did the debtor class preponderate in the early move- 
ments that, until the adhesion of Hancock, Washington, 
Franklin, John Adams, and other men of wealth and sta- 
tion became known, it was widely claimed in England and 
America that resistance was merely the work of a crowd 
of disorderly men who refused to pay their debts or who had 
nothing to lose.'' 

5 The evidence is too voluminous to be cited in so brief a book and 
will be found literally in all directions. An example or two must suf- 
fice. Johnston, one of the North Carolina radicals, wrote to a friend 



114 THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 

Then, when the tacit recognition of the Revolution by the 
people permitted the extension of organization, the ablest 
and most prominent men were at once drawn into the serv- 
ice of the States, of the central administration, or of the 
army, and local government fell into the hands of the 
most radical and least experienced men connected with the 
movement. Nor were their acts likely to be questioned or 
their discretion hampered from above, as they well knew. 
The men at the helm in the State had staked their all upon 
success and were not receiving such universal support as to 
make them willing to quarrel with the local leaders for being 
too outspoken or too energetic in maintaining the cause. 
Graver business, too, prevented really adequate supervision of 
the local committees, whom the exigencies of the situation 
thus invested with literally absolute, unrestricted authority. 

The men into whose hands this vast power fell were for 
the most part debtors and they promptly began to use it 
against all who had for a variety of reasons not yet openly 
joined the Cause. John Adams and others have recorded 
opinions that not more than a third of the people openly 
espoused the movement, but the great majority of those who 
held aloof were by no means British sympathizers. "Some 
are [hostile] from real attachment to Britain," said a letter 
written by a secret committee of Congress; "some from inter- 
ested views, many, very many, from fear of the British forces, 
some because they are dissatisfied with the general measures 

in December 1776, that the members of the Constitutional Convention 
of North Carolina who had the least pretensions to be gentlemen were 
regarded with suspicion by the others (who were in the majority) and 
who were "a set of men without reading, experience, or principle to 
govern them." The members of the first legislature he characterized as 
"fools and knaves, who by their low Arts have worked themselves into 
the good graces of the populace." North Carolina Records, X, 1041 ; 
XI, 504, 627 ; and elsewhere. The crew of an American war vessel were 
thus described: "His people really appear to me to be a set of the 
most vmprincipled abandoned fellows I ever saw." American Archives, 
Fourth Series, III, 1378, 1658. (1775.) 

If such was the testimony of patriots, one can readily imagine the 
opinions of loyalists and Englishmen. 



FIRST ATTEMPTS AT PERMANENT ORGANIZATION 115 

of Congress, more because they disapprove of the men in 
power and the measures in their respective States." The 
"Patriots," however, dubbed all these men "Loyalists" and 
began to deal with them all as professed enemies of the Cause. 
Avowed supporters of England and English officials were 
promptly driven out of the district, their property confis- 
cated, and such as were captured were subjected to indigni- 
ties and such physical abuse as tar and feathering. The 
timid soon discovered, therefore, that the consequences of not 
abetting the Revolution were more tangible and quite as 
terrifying as those of opposing England, and the committees 
of correspondence thus convinced very large numbers of peo- 
ple that George III was a tyrant. 

But the exercise of authority grew by what it fed on and 
demanded new victims. The ease of employing this new 
weapon to pay off old scores and to further selfish interests 
was too great for many to resist the temptation. Thus self- 
interest and the spice of hatred and traditional antipathy 
between the debtors and creditors gave the Revolution a 
mighty impulse and the deeds done in the name of Liberty 
committed many thousands to its cause by methods w^hich 
only eventual success could condone.*^ A good many men 

« The minister of Loiigmeadow, Massachusetts, a patriot, gives the 
following account in his Diary of 1776: "April 9. — I hear of tumults 
and disorderly practices; stupidity, hardness of heart, atheism, and 
unbelief prevail. The British ministiy breathe out cruelty against the 
colonies still. . . . July 24. — A numl)er of people gathered together, 
some dressed like Indians with blankets, and manifested uneasiness 
with those that trade in rum, molasses, sugar, etc. I understand that 
a number went to ^Merchant Colton's and have again [note this signifi- 
cant word] taken away his goods. I don't see the justice or equity 
of it. Many don't approve of it, but have not resolution enough to 
interpose and endeavor redress. . . . Nov. 30 — Military Co. called to- 
gether at a minute's warning to go wherever called. People don't 
appear forward. . . . Our soldiers begin to return that enlisted for a 
stated time, and people seem engaged to get money, and I fear by op- 
pression and unjust measures." Hart, American History Told by Con- 
temporaries, II, 4r>C}, 457. 

A bibliography of the loyalists and their sufferings is in C. H. Van 
Tyne, American Revolution, 338-340. Particularly interesting is Samuel 
Curwen'a Journal and Letters. 



116 THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 

of wealth were promptly declared loyalists and their prop- 
erty seized and distributed, although they protested that they 
were not English supporters at all. Imitations of the Tea 
Party gave excuse for the robbing of stores and warehouses ; 
local regulations and even state laws required the payment 
of coin by loyalists to patriots and the acceptance of de- 
preciated paper currency at its face value from patriots in 
exchange for goods. The property of all the exiles, volun- 
tary and involuntary, was at once distributed. In time, this 
war of the debtor upon the creditor class culminated in that 
union of the propertied class throughout the country in 
favor of strong government which was largely responsible 
for the adoption of the Constitution. In the meantime, this 
onslaught upon the creditors pretty generally brought about 
their adhesion to the Revolution or their organization against 
it. After 1776, the loyalists were in the minority in New 
England; in the South, they were in the minority along the 
coast and in the majority in the interior; while in the Mid- 
dle States they equaled if they did not outnumber the pa- 
triots. Thus, throughout the country, the existence of a 
stanch opposition to the Revolution, in many districts thor- 
oughly successful, became evident. 

It has been difficult for posterity to realize that a con- 
siderable portion of the people did not support the Revolu- 
tion; it has been even more difficult for us to realize that 
their opposition to the movement was based upon differences 
of opinion for the most part American in their origin and 
effect, which did not in the least indicate a desire for Eng- 
lish rule or a dislike of American independence. The op- 
position was the normal result of the civil war in America. 

The issue raised by the war, as contemporaries saw it, 
was not as much the desirability or possibility of independ- 
ence of England — upon this the agreement was so general 
as hardly to admit of debate or require argument — but of 
the desirability and expediency of obtaining that independ- 
ence by means of a central administration whose very ex- 
istence would necessarily deprive the States of some of their 



FIRST ATTEMPTS AT PERMANENT ORGANIZATION 117 

cherished soverei^ty. Not loyalty to England, but States' 
sovereignty was the formidable obstacle in the way of the 
Revolution preventing permanent cooperation. Many and 
many a man seriously feared the results of a victory over the 
British won by Washington at the head of an army, which 
might then be strong enough to erect a central government 
more powerful, and therefore more obnoxious, than the British 
government had ever been. States' sovereignty and State 
independence were the supremely desirable things and the 
great majority had no more intention of sacrificing them to 
erect a revolutionary organization in America than they had 
of submitting to the rule of George III. 

Independence meant, as Paine phrased it, "a, continental 
form of government (which) can keep the peace of the 
continent and preserve it inviolate from civil war." Sig- 
nificant words, these ; significant, too, his omission of all 
mention of England. John Adams, writing to his wife in 
April 1776, defined independence as ''government in every 
colony, a confederation among them all, and treaties with 
foreign nations to acknowledge us as a sovereign State, and 
all that." Of a nation in our sense of the word, composed 
of individuals and governed by a central administration, 
superior in obligation to the State governments so far as 
the individual was concerned, there seems to have been little 
talk. The idea, if it occurred to many, seems not to have 
been seriously discussed. The "continental form of govern- 
ment" meant one which provided explicitly for the sovereignty 
of thirteen separate States. Some of the States declared 
themselves independent of England in the spring of 1776 ; the 
rest afterwards followed suit, while there seems to be good 
reason to believe that the County of IMecklenburg, N. C, 
declared itself independent as early as May 1775.'^ 

The expediency of any central government, the exact form 
of the new government, its probable powers, its relation to 
the States, the necessity or desirability of forming new State 

7 Hoyt, Mecklenburg Declaration. The Resolves of May 31 are un- 
doubtedly genuine; the document of May 20 is now generally rejected. 



118 THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 

governments, all these were really the issues behind the 
question of independence, which was so widely and actively 
discussed throughout America from the summer of 1775 to 
the summer of 1776. Public meetings thrashed it over; dele- 
gates traveled the length and breadth of the States to learn 
the trend of opinion; and a pretty general conclusion was 
reached in the States by the people themselves in June 1776, 
in favor of a general declaration of independence of Eng- 
land by the States as sovereign entities.^ 

Congress really registered the opinion of the country in 
Lee's famous Resolutions and the even more notable docu- 
ment drafted by Jefferson to embody them. On July 2nd, 
Congress adopted the principle of independence; on July 
4th, it discussed, amended, and accepted the document pre- 
pared by the Committee, and referred it back to those gentle- 
men for final verbal revision. The document, with which 
we are familiar, was completed by the committee some time 
during the night of July 4th and 5th and was printed and 
published next day by order of Congress. The signing of 
the document was an afterthought; the full delegation of 
some States had not been present on July 4th and there was 
some fear that subsequent misfortunes might set the various 
States seeking loopholes through which to escape equal re- 
sponsibility. Most of the signatures were appended on Au- 
gust 2nd, though a few were affixed as late as November.® 

The Declaration of Independence was a statement of the 

8 The evidence has been printed by J. H. Hazelton, The Declaration of 
Independence, Its History. 

9 The Journals of Congress are quite explicit on all these points. 
John Adams believed that July 2 would be the day celebrated. Mellen 
Chamberlain was the first to explain how July 4 came to be the day. 
The secretary of Congress when he came to write up the Journal saved 
himself the labor of copying the text of the Declaration by pasting into 
the Journal under July 4 one of the printed copies of the document 
with all the signatures appended which had been issued in the autumn 
of 1776 to give it publicity. When the Journal was printed afterwards, 
this printed copy with the names was included in the official account 
of the proceedings of July 4 as historians and the general public re- 
ceived it. Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society for 
November 1884. 



FIRST ATTEMPTS AT PERMANENT ORGANIZATION 119 

evident fact that the American colonies were in reality and 
long had been independent of England; that they had gov- 
erned themselves in the past without assistance and could 
do so in the future; that their interests were too different 
from those of the mother-country for them to accept her 
decisions in regard to policy. The Declaration of Independ- 
ence was also unquestionably a verdict in favor of a central 
organization of some sort, and might even be argued to have 
declared some such government essential. But it was an 
even more explicit affirmation of the point most important 
to Americans in 1776 — the absolute sovereignty of the in- 
dividual States over their own citizens and their complete 
independence of each other. The capitalization of the title 
was itself freighted with meaning: "A Declaration by the 
representatives of the united States of America, in Congress 
assembled." The phrases of the document, which followed 
the long preamble, were even more explicit: "The Repre- 
sentatives of the united States of America," ''by authority 
of the good people of these colonies, solemnly publish and 
declare. That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought 
to be Free and Independent States." ^° 

The plunge once taken, the solemn pledge of the independ- 
ence of the individual States of each other and of the central 
government once passed, the business of permanent organi- 
zation began. Naturally enough, the lines of policy already 
laid down by the opposition to England were followed, and 
such permanent action as was taken at once was local and not 
national. Some of the States had already formed new govern- 
ments; the others began to make constitutions in the sum- 
mer and fall of 1776. That there might be no excuse for 
misinterpretation, most of them explicitly declared their in- 
dependence of all other authority in the world in the pre- 
ambles of the new constitutions. The Pennsylvania Con- 
vention expressed its approval of the Declaration of Inde- 

10 This quotation is from the parchment engrossed copy in the De- 
partment of State at Washington. The word "United" in the last 
clause is omitted in several of the manuscript copies. 



120 THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 

pendence and went on to declare "this, as well as the other 
United States of America, free and Independent. ' ' The Con- 
necticut Assembly voted "that this Colony is and of right 
ought to be a free and independent State." The power of 
the people, the necessity of their confirming the work of the 
conventions, a strong bi-cameral legislature, a weak executive, 
the separation of powers, these other legacies from the colo- 
nial period definitely shaped the form of the new State 
governments. Experiments were tried, and, in these suc- 
cessive State constitutions, each of which attempted to in- 
clude the good points of those already in operation and to 
avoid the unsuccessful expedients, we see gradually taking 
form the Constitution of the United States. 

Congress set to work in 1776 upon a plan of central govern- 
ment, and, in the meantime, appointed various new com- 
mittees to struggle with the obvious administrative questions 
whose solution was imperative. These were chiefly military 
or connected with supplying the army and navy with neces- 
sities. Ambassadors to the chief European nations were 
promptly appointed : Franklin to France ; Adams to Holland ; 
Lee to England; Jay to Spain. The framework of a tem- 
porary central administration was thus erected. Gradually 
the Marine Committee, under the able guidance of Robert 
Morris, assumed chief place, and began to develop a system 
of administration through agents in the principal ports which 
soon became adequate for most purposes. These Continental 
Agents, as they came to be known, were primarily appointed 
to receive and forward to the army the supplies brought 
from Europe or captured by privateers, but they soon were 
busy with various types of work and formed a network of 
officials throughout America upon whom Congress more and 
more was forced to depend and who became a connecting 
link not only between the administration at Philadelphia 
and the States in America, but between Congress and the 
Ambassadors and agents abroad. 

From the first, the importance of recognition by the Euro- 
pean nations was appreciated. The knowledge that it could 



FIRST ATTEMPTS AT PERMANENT ORGANIZATION 121 

not come until America had definitely declared the purpose 
of the war and pledged itself to independence had been a 
prime factor in securing the consent of the timid to the 
Declaration of Independence. Somewhat to their dismay, 
the leaders were informed that the Declaration was not re- 
garded in Europe as sufficient to entitle the United Colonies 
to recognition. Franklin had been despatched to France to 
obtain recognition and an alliance, but wrote that fears of 
the inability of Washington's army to cope with the English 
and doubts as to the stability, permanence, and efficiency of 
the alliance between the States were nearly insuperable ob- 
stacles to the conclusion of a treaty. Congress was still only 
a body of delegates, whose decisions were at any moment 
likely to be reversed or disavowed by the sovereign States, 
a body therefore limited to those decisions which it had 
reason to believe would not be repudiated. This lack of a 
definite grant of authority, the entire lack of certainty that 
their commands would be obeyed, vitally weakened the central 
government at a moment when the exigencies of the war 
required prompt and decisive action. It was naturally not 
a body upon whose solemn pledge the European govern- 
ments would rely. 

The defeat at Long Island, the disaster at White Plains, 
the continued loss of position after position during the sum- 
mer of 1776 and Washington's retreat across the Jerseys 
upon Philadelphia in the fall only too clearly weakened 
support at home and rendered aid from abroad unlikely. 
Indeed the continued existence of the army was problem- 
atical, and the battle of Trenton was fought on December 
25th, 1776, in order to use the army before it should melt 
away.^^ That overwhelming success put new life into the 

11 "The present exigency of our affairs will not admit of delay. . . . 
Ten days more will put an end to the existence of our army." Wash- 
ington to the President of Congress, Dec. 20, 1776. See also the letter 
of December 24. Writings of Washington, Ford's ed., V, 113; 124-5; 
127; 129. "The militia must be taken before their spirits and patience •^ 

are exhausted." Reed to Washington. Reed, Life of Joseph Reed, 
I, 273. 



»'• 



* 



122 THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 

army and into Congress and convinced the English and the 
French that their first conclusions had been mistakes. "Mr. 
Washington" had arrived to stay. The failure of the Amer- 
icans to do more than hold their own in the spring of 1777, 
the failure to adopt some form of central government to take 
the place of the anomalous multiple executive at Philadelphia, 
and the invasion of Burgoyne from Canada, all had a most 
unfavorable effect upon opinion at home and particularly 
abroad. No nation was anxious to recognize a movement 
likely at any instant to be crushed; to make terms with a 
central government which was as yet confessedly a make- 
shift and which seemed each month liable to dissolve from 
internal dissensions; or to sign a treaty with a number of 
States which were obviously unable to agree upon as funda- 
mental a point as the expediency of having a central govern- 
ment powerful enough to enforce upon them all a common 
agreement or decision. 

The surrender of Burgoyne in October 1777, decided 
nearly all the outstanding questions. The Congress at Phila- 
delphia adopted the Articles of Confederation in November; 
in December, the French expressed their willingness to recog- 
nize the new government and to sign a treaty of alliance; 
in January, the English began to draw up measures of com- 
promise and treaties of peace. Parliament and King were 
willing to yield anything short of independence. The matter 
had, however, now gone too far for compromise; the Amer- 
icans had agreed upon a new central government from which 
much was expected ; they were offered an alliance with the 
most powerful nation in Europe, England's oldest and bitter- 
est foe. They considered the successful conclusion of the 
war to be mainly a question of time. Congress, therefore, 
•■ rejected the English offers without much hesitation, and ac- 
% cepted the alliance with France. Many and many a dark 
day was still to dawn, when even the stoutest heart was 
destined to quake from fear that all was lost; but from the 
spring of 1778, the ultimate outcome of the war seems really 
never to have been in doubt. 



WHY WE WON THE REVOLUTION 

The winning of the Revolution long concealed the essential 
truth about its military aspects. When historians and patri- 
otic speakers considered its trend at its twenty-fifth and 
fiftieth anniversaries, the fact that we had won proved to 
thera conclusively that our victory was due to superior mil- 
itary ability. It was to them inconceivable that the success- 
ful conclusion of a great war, fought for so high a stake 
as the independence of a continent, should have been ac- 
complished by any less decisive factors than the best general 
and the most numerous army. The "survivors" of Lexing- 
ton, Concord, and Bunker Hill, who appeared in 1825 on 
the occasion of Webster's memorable oration, which itself 
* ' made ' ' history, were also sufficiently numerous to cause men 
to believe irresistibly that we must have had a large army 
upon the field. Moreover, the victory, besides demonstrating 
our military efficiency, was naturally supposed to prove that 
the history of the war Avas the tale of a triumphant march 
toward the goal of independence, of which their fathers had 
been proud, whose glories the sons must venerate with en- ^n- 
thusiastic and sincere devotion, and whose reverses could only ^^ 
add to the martyristie halo already shrouding the patriots 
who fought in it. 

So strong indeed is the predisposition of every loyal Amer- 
ican to accept these conclusions as true, that historians have 
long been afraid to emphasize the real aspects of the war 
for fear of being charged with disloyalty and a disposition 
to destroy patriotic ideals. No serious student now denies 
that we won the war with an army much less numerous and 
efficient than the British force and with generals certainly 

123 



124 THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 

not comparable to great European leaders like Csesar and 
Cromwell. Indeed, we lost, with some striking exceptions, 
every battle of note. Lexington, Concord,^ Bunker Hill, 
Long Island, Brandywine, Germantown, Camden, Guilford's 
Court House, were all defeats, and in the battles we did win, 
Trenton, Bennington, Saratoga, Yorktown, the Americans out- 
numbered the English. The glories of victory over Burgoyne 
are somewhat diminished by the knowledge that some six or 
seven thousand British, without adequate provisions or am- 
munition, were surrounded in the woods by some twenty 
thousand Americans well supplied with food and powder and 
constantly reinforced from the surrounding countryside. 
During the campaigns, the English invariably marched where 
they pleased, and, except at Saratoga, the Americans retreated 
before them or followed.^ From the military point of view, 
as C. F. Adams and others have shown,^ the Revolution is 
disappointing to the student and patriot alike. Nor were 
the English ever driven out of the country ; * they ended the 

1 In the technical military sense, the side which remains in posses- 
sion of the field is the victor and there can be no question of the ability 
of the British to have remained as long as they liked on either field. 
The country was overjoyed because the Americans had not been ex- 
pected even to attempt resistance. 

2 Note for instance the war from Long Island to Trenton ; the cam- 
paigns of Howe against Philadelphia; the campaign of Cornwallis in 
the South. Washington stated in a circular letter to the States, dated 
Oct. 18, 1780, when the American army was stronger and better disci- 
plined than at any previous period of the war, that "the enemy [are] 
at full liberty to ravage the country wherever they please." 

3 C. F. Adams, Studies Military and Diplomatic, 1775-1865. (1912.) 
The evidence is well summarized and the foot-notes contain an adequate 
list of authorities. 

4 The fact itself is patent: the British army occupied New York and 
other sections until after the Treaty of Peace. Washington had made 
up his mind as early as 1780 that the Americans alone could not drive 
them out. "I should not advise to calculate matters on the principle 
of expelling [the British] without the cooperation of the French navy. 
... I imagine we must of necessity adopt the principle of a defensive 
campaign." Washington to Baron Steuben, Feb. 8, 1780. Writings of 
Washington, Ford's ed., VIII, 194. "You know our inability to expel 
them imassisted, or perhaps even to stop their career." Sparks's Wash- 
ington's Writings, VII, 200. Again at 206. 



WHY WE WON THE REVOLUTION" 125 

war, not because they were defeated, but because they were 
convinced of the impossibility of ever holding the country 
without subduing it, and of the impracticability of trying to 
conquer and hold in subjection a land of continental dimen- 
sions, three thousand miles distant from their own source of 
supplies. 

If we add to this a picture of the American army at Cam- 
bridge when Washington took command, armed with pitch- 
forks and clubs, and without powder for such guns as they 
did have ; of the army, naked, hungry, and shivering at Valley 
Forge, while the Pennsylvania farmers carried their produce 
into Philadelphia to exchange for British gold ; ° of the whole- 
sale desertion of companies and regiments at critical mo- 
ments;® of the intrigues to injure Washington's reputation 
by allowing him to be defeated and so to secure his removal 
and to appoint Lee or Gates in his stead; we shall under- 
stand better the gloomy forebodings which filled the leaders' 
letters all through the war J The real atmosphere of the time 
is not triumph but despair. "I have seen without despond- 
ency even for a moment," wrote Washington to George 
Mason, as late as March 27, 1779, "the hours which America 
have [sic] stiled her gloomy ones, but I have beheld no day 
since the commencement of hostilities that I have thought her 
liberties in such eminent danger as at present. . . . Where 

5 On this whole topic see L. C. Hatch, The Administration of the 
American Revolutionary Army. (1904.) The trade with the British 
Boon became extensive and open. "While our army is experiencing 
almost daily want, that of the enemy in New York is deriving ample 
supplies from a trade with the adjacent States . . . which has by de- 
grees become so common that it is hardly thought a crime." Washing- 
ton to the President of Congress, Nov. 7, 1780. Sparks's Writings of 
Washington, VII, 286-7; and a longer and more explicit statement on 
p. 401. 

6 "The militia, who come in, you cannot tell how, go, you cannot tell 
when, and act, you cannot tell where, consume your provisions, exhaust 
your stores, and leave you at last at a critical moment." Washington 
to the President of Congress. Writings of Washington, Ford's ed., V, 
115 (Dec. 20, 1776) ; also VIII. 290, 292, 503, 506. An instructive 
document is the report of a committee of Congress on deserters in Feb., 
1777. Journals, Ford's ed., VII, 115-118. 

T For instance, Writings of Washington, Ford's ed., VIII, 503-4. 



126 THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 

are our men of abilities? Why do they not come forth to 
save their country ? Let this voice, my dear friend, call upon 
you — Jefferson and others — do not ... let our hitherto noble 
struggle end in ignom 'y- " ^ Is it likely that George Wash- 
ington would have written as strongly as this to as prominent 
a man as Mason and named a man like Jefferson if the re- 
sponse from the country had been as spontaneously enthusi- 
astic as the older accounts assume? ''I have seen in this 
world," wrote John Adams, "but a little of that pure flame 
of patriotism which certainly burns in some breasts. There 
is much of the ostentation and affectation of it. " ^ These 
words from the men in America who certainly should have 
known the facts are of great significance. The Revolution 
was not a time when the exaltation of continuous victory and 
the sense of superiority buoyed up the American leaders in 
campaigns of constant success, but a time when the keen 
knowledge of the army's weakness,^'' of the lukewarmness of 
the people,^^ and the bitter realization of the ability of the 
British general to march whither he would made even Wash- 
ington despair of a favorable outcome of the war, long after 
Trenton and Saratoga had been won. He remembered, as we 
have too often forgotten, that the men who fought at Bunker 
Hill were anxious to conceal their presence; that Parker vig- 
orously denied having fired at Lexington upon the British at 
all ; that the victory at Trenton had been since deprecated in 
Congress and his own generalship seriously questioned. The 

8 Writings of Washington, Ford's ed., VII, 382. 

^Familiar Letters, 214. August 18, 1776. This was written a little 
more than a month after the passage of the Declaration of Independence. 

10 Washington periodically doubted until 1781 whether the army 
would be in existence three months hence. 

11 A French traveler thought that "there is a hundred times more 
enthusiasm for the Revolution in the first caf6 you choose to name at 
Paris than there is in all the United States together." Stedman, 
American War, I, 387. "The enemy are daily gathering strength from 
the disaffected," Washington wrote on Dec. 20, 1776. Writings of 
Washington, Ford's ed., V, 114. Also pp. 124-5. "The contest among 
the different States now is not which shall do most for the common 
cause but which shall do least." Washington to Fielding Lewis, July 
6, 1780. Ford's ed., VIII, 335. 



WHY WE WON THE REVOLUTION 127 

Revolution was a time of defeat and despair, and Washington 
least of all believed that the final victory was due to the win- 
ning of campaigns by a ragged and ill-disciplined army over 
a well-equipped and thoroughly disciplined force. He well 
knew that many factors contributed to the final result. 

Yet the difficulties of the situation, far from robbing Wash- 
ington and his aides of the glory that has been so long ac- 
corded them, only increases and intensifies it. The laurels, 
given a leader whom all conditions favor, whose army is 
strong, whose countrymen throng round him with joy, are 
in no way comparable to the crown to be awarded the general 
who wins his war without a strong army and in the face of 
the hostility and suspicion of his countrymen. Washington 
and his generals won the war by the use of the weapons 
they did possess, which were amazingly effective, despite the 
fact that some of them appeared in military annals for the 
first time and others were hardly military at all. So far 
as it can be true that any one man ever did win a war, 
George Washington won the Revolution single-handed. He 
did not so much lead the American people, as drag them 
after him to a victory and an independence which they had 
not entirely made up their minds to seek. Scientific research 
has heightened, not diminished, the reputations of the leaders. 

Unquestionably we won the Revolution because the Eng- 
lish did not push the war in 1775 and 1776. Possessed of 
an immensely superior force, well-equipped and highly dis- 
ciplined, Lord Howe dallied around Boston and New York 
when he might have been laying waste New England and 
the ]\riddle Colonies without any danger to himself. The 
reasons for his inaction were at the time as little understood 
in England as in America. A tract called A Succinct Re- 
view of the American Contest, printed in London in 1778, 
blamed generals and ministers severely. General Howe had 
not prosecuted a war at all, declared the author, but had 
merely attempted "to determine a military wager between 
him and ]\Ir. Washington, whom he, at the head of a limited 
and small body of English, had undertaken to fight, with all 



128 THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 

the Americans together in any part of America that Mr. 
"Washington should choose; and that, to give the Americans 
fair play, he had obliged himself to do nothing that should 
obstruct their assembling," The British, he complained, had 
respected the property of the Americans who took the field, 
and had not interfered in the least with the occupations of 
those who stayed at home. His brother on board Howe's 
fleet had written that two thousand men landed in Virginia 
"would easily lay waste the whole province, but it seems to 
hurt the Americans without loss or danger to ourselves is 
not the present system of polities." Had Howe taken the 
field in this spirit our ragged and ill-disciplined army, which 
Washington kept in existence only by the greatest of ex- 
ertions, must soon have been destroyed. Indeed, as General 
C. F. Adams has shown, only Howe's slowness prevented its 
complete annihilation at Long Island. The control of the sea 
would have enabled him to land troops on every side of the 
American position and would have made impossible the escape 
by sea of any who slipped through his cordon on land. The 
total lack of both a continental military and administrative 
machine when the war began; the jealousies of the States;^" 
the refusal of the militia to serve outside their State; their 
enlistment for six weeks or six months only; the lack of 
powder and shot; the quarrels in Congress, must all have 
proved fatal to us^^ but for this forbearance of the British. 

12 "Unless the bodies politic will exert themselves to bring things 
back to first principles — correct abuses and punish our Internal Foes — 
inevitable ruin must follow. . . . Our Enemy behold with exultation 
and joy how we labor for their benefit," Washington to Mason, March 
27, 1779. Writings of Washington, Ford's ed., VII, 382. "One State 
will comply with a requisition from Congress ; another neglects to do 
it; a third executes it by halves; all differ either in the manner, the 
matter, or so much in point of time, that we are always working up 
hill and ever shall be. . . . We shall ever be unable to apply our 
strength or resources to any advantage. ... I see one head gradually 
changing into thirteen." Washington to Joseph Jones. Ibid., VIII, 
304, May 31, 1780. 

13 "Nothing but the supineness or folly of the enemy could have 
saved us from [i-uin]." Washington, circular letter to the States, Oct. 
18, 1780. IbU., VIII, 503. 



WHY WE WON THE REVOLUTION 129 

It has often been called folly but was really based upon a 
most careful study of conditions. 

The English view of the American situation is not con- 
tained in the speeches of Burke or Chatham nor in the tyran- 
nical notions of George III and Lord North about repre- 
sentation, but in the ideas of the latter about the factors in 
America which had produced the revolt. The King, the min- 
istry, and the educated classes were firmly convinced that 
the movement was the work of a small faction, which was 
not supported by the majority of the people. That the colo- 
nies should forget their own jealousies and differences long 
enough to unite was to George improbable, and that the few 
leaders should be able to weld together permanently such 
inconsistent elements was unthinkable. The weakness of the 
malcontents, the stanch loyalty of a large majority to Eng- 
land, and the jealousies of the States would soon end the 
struggle, if only the English army did not by plundering 
and marauding force the waverers into opposition and com- 
pel them in very truth to defend their own firesides. Given 
time and a little assistance at precisely the right moments, 
the loyalists in America would themselves crush out this 
selfish uprising. Furthermore, a military conquest of Amer- 
ica by an English army was highly inexpedient if harmonious 
relations with the colonies were to be eventually restored. 
George and his advisers were anxious to retain the allegiance 
of the colonists, and were well aware that men who had 
been excited to the point of armed resistance by the mild 
acts Parliament had just passed were certain to be antago- 
nized for long years by the burning of their homes and the 
death of their loved ones. The King was aware that a strong 
minority in the American Congress favored peace at any 
price, that a strong party in his own Parliament and ministry 
also favored conciliation, and that the American army was 
barely kept alive by the most desperate expedients.^* The 

14 "They [the British] believed that when one army expired, we 
should not be able to raise another; undeceived however in this ex- 
pectation by experience, they still remain unconvinced, and to me 



130 THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 

pressing of the war, then, until it should become perfectly 
clear that peaceable overtures were futile and the loyalists 
too weak to overpower the patriots, was the most certain 
method of promoting the very thing the war was being 
fought to prevent, the loss of the colonies' allegiance. The 
English must win the war without alienating the Americans. 
A victory obtained in any other fashion would be as deadly 
as a defeat. Throughout the first two years of the war, 
therefore, the English ministry expected to end the war as 
much by "compromise" or negotiation as by a successful 
campaign. Lord Howe was to win a decisive victory if he 
could and the sooner the better; but he was not to allow 
"Mr. Washington" to disturb the forces working in Amer- 
ica for a peaceful settlement, nor was he to take any risk 
of disturbing them himself, without a practical certainty 
of ending the w^ar by a crushing defeat of the Americans. 

Thanks to this politic forbearance, we were given the time 
necessary to evolve an army and a central administration out 
of nothing. The natural difficulties of the situation were 
enormous. Powder, shot, arms, clothing had to be imported 
and were not only difficult to obtain but exceedingly difficult 
to distribute when secured. As the British controlled the 
sea, everything had to be carted overland, and this difficulty 
of communication proved at times literally insuperable. The 
lack of good currency, the lack of credit due to the absence 
of faith in the successful outcome of the war, prevented any 
general acceptance of the colonial paper money for food and 
such few supplies as could be had in America. Despite all 
difficulties, however, by 1778, when the English took up the 
war in earnest, Von Steuben had drilled the army into some- 
thing like efficiency; Nathanael Greene had put the quarter- 
evidently on good grounds, that we must ultimately sink under a sys- 
tem which increases our expense beyond calculation, enfeebles all our 
measures, affords the most inviting opportunities to the enemy, and 
wearies and disgusts the people. Tliis has undoubtedly had great in- 
fluence in preventing their coming to terms and will continue to operate 
In the same way." Washington, circular letter to the States, Oct. 18, 
1780. Writings of Washington, Ford's ed., VIII, 505. 



WHY WE W^ON THE REVOLUTION 131 

master 's department on its feet ; Robert Morris had organized, 
through the Marine Committee of Congress, a series of Conti- 
nental Agents in the important ports who had developed a 
method of exchanging products, by which the army was sup- 
plied with what they received from Europe and from the 
English supplies seized by American privateers. Washington 
had learned from experience to avoid his first blunders and to 
take advantage of the natural forces fighting for us, as well 
as of the French army and navy who soon appeared on the 
scene. Indeed, without their aid and the money and arms 
Franklin secured in Europe, it is probable the Revolution 
would still have failed; even the tact and influence of AVash- 
ington could not have kept an army in the field longer with- 
out arms and money from abroad.^^ 

The strategical geography of the eastern Atlantic coast 
plus the three thousand miles of ocean were almost as deci- 
sive factors in our favor. The North Atlantic is always 
difficult for sailing-ships, and at that time a month or six 
weeks was considered a quick passage. The English general, 
therefore, knew when he began the campaign in the spring 
that three months at least must elapse under favorable con- 
ditions before he could receive instructions or assistance. He 
also knew that the preparation of an army for the voyage 
was a long task, needing two months or more; for the beef 
had to be killed and salted; the grain bought, carried to 
the sea-coast, ground, and baked into bread; the soldiers en- 
listed, their clothes made, their guns provided, powder and 
shot prepared. To allow himself to be defeated or out- 
manoeuvered in the early summer meant the possibility of 
annihilation before help could arrive. Howe and Clinton 
campaigned therefore in the fall when the coming of winter 
would naturally limit Washington's ability to take advantage 
of possible successes. After all, they were to win battles 
if they could, but at all costs to keep an army in the field.^® 

15 See Washington's letters during 1780. 

16 "Yet it is a fact, they [the British] are as much afraid and cau- 
tious of us as we can be any of us of them." Col. Smallwood's report 



132 THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 

Both protested and Howe complained energetically that the 
army he had was not in the least adequate for the military 
occupation of the continent. In truth, he and his generals 
soon discovered that the Atlantic seaboard lacks a strategic 
spot like that of the Netherlands, which, when taken, opens 
the gates into several countries and menaces half Europe. 
They found instead a seat of war a thousand miles long, 
intersected by many large rivers whose courses lay parallel 
to each other, thus cutting the country into large sections and 
making long overland marches most difficult. The English, 
at first, thought Boston the strategic point, but were soon 
disabused: it did not help them to hold a foot of land out- 
side the lines of their own fortifications. Prolonged resi- 
dence in New York and Philadelphia at last convinced them 
that there was no charmed spot in America whose possession 
ensured the conquest of the whole. Instead they found their 
armies constantly out of touch with each other, often on their 
own resources, and were, so far as they could see, no further 
advanced toward the conquest of the continent by all their 
marching and countermarching than when they began. As 
early as the fall of 1776, Howe realized the truth and wrote 
home that 10,000 men in New England, 20,000 in New York, 
10,000 in the South, and an additional army of 10,000 men 
to operate against "Washington would be necessary to finish 
the war.^^ He was laughed to scorn by the English ministry 
who knew that the total American forces in the field did not 
number 10,000, who were divided among several armies and 
were all likely to go home at any moment. When the course 
of events reluctantly brought them to the same conclusion 
in 1781, they gave up the struggle,^^ for the maintenance 

to the Maryland Council of Safety, Oct. 1776. Quoted in H. B. Car- 
rington's Battles of the American Revolution, 233. 

17 H. B. Carrington, Battles of the American Revolution, 254, 279. 

18 "That one great point [of Howe's plan] is to keep us as much 
harassed as possible with a view to injure the recruiting service and 
hinder a collection of stores and other necessaries for the next cam- 
paign, I am as clear in, as I am of my existence." Washington to the 
President of Congress, Dec. 20, 1776. Writings of Washington, Ford's 
ed., V, 113. This would end "the British hope of subjugating thia 



WHY WE WON THE REVOLUTION 133 

of a permanent army of 50,000 men to keep America in 
subjection was too expensive a proposition to be thought of. 
After all, they reflected, if Adam Smith was right, the Amer- 
ican trade, which was really the only benefit they could 
secure from the possession of the colonies, would come to 
them anyway. 

While the length of the seat of war and its intersection by 
large rivers furnished the Americans with problems in trans- 
portation and in the manceuvering of armies fully as difficult 
as those the English experienced, these factors immensely 
reduced the discrepancy between the size and discipline of 
the armies. The discipline of troops who cannot reach you is 
unimportant; and the fact that England possessed greater 
resources in men and money was neutralized by the difficulty 
the Atlantic interposed in the way of their utilization. The 
two parties were by no means as ill-matched for a long strug- 
gle as at first seems. There were, moreover, numerous nat- 
ural factors which left the balance enormously in the Ameri- 
cans' favor and which in the long run as much as any single 
factor contributed to bring about the result. 

The very fact of the British army's discipline and organi- 
zation became a hindrance the moment they left the open 
fields about the Hudson and Delaware and advanced into 
the wilds of Lake George and the hill-country of North 
Carolina. A couple of thousand farmers in their shirt-sleeves 
and without any artillery and baggage would straggle across 
fields, scaling fences, penetrating woods and losing little if 
anything of their efficiency in the process: they had little in 
fact to lose, for the only method of fighting they understood 
called for men behind trees and stone walls and not arrayed 
in line of battle. A British column, on the other hand, could 
not advance without roads, for the trampling of many feet 
and the wheels of the artillery and baggage-wagons soon 

continent either by their arms or their arts. The first, as I have before 
observed, they acknowledge is unequal to the task; the latter I am 
sure will be s^ if we are not lost to everything that is good and virtu- 
ous." Ibid., VII, 389. 



134 THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 

rendered even a dry field a quagmire. Fences, rivers, woods 
were insurmountable obstacles. Burgoyne spent days on the 
march south from Canada in 1777 building roads and bridges 
m order that he might advance at all, and consumed in 
reaching the Hudson as many weeks as Schuyler's men had 
used days. Inasmuch as few roads in America were sufid- 
ciently well made to stand the travel of an army, the Amer- 
icans possessed a positive advantage over the English in 
manoeuvering, which would have given them victory after 
victory, had not the very lack of organization that helped 
them on the march been a fatal deficiency on the field of 
battle. The British, therefore, could rarely be dislodged, but 
could always be eluded. After the first two years, the Amer- 
ican generals thoroughly appreciated this fact and kept the 
campaigns in territory which offered the English the maxi- 
mum difficulty. European strategy, which assumed the ex- 
istence of roads to march upon and level, unobstructed fields 
to manceuver upon was useless to a general conducting a cam- 
paign which was really a series of contests with the country 
itself. ** Almost every movement of the war in North 
America," wrote General Howe, "was an act of enterprise 
clogged with innumerable difficulties." 

Then appeared the necessity of supplying the armies with 
food. Here too the very factors about which Washington at 
first chiefly complained were the Americans' salvation. Their 
armies were, except for the few regiments of regulars under 
Washington himself, nothing but collections of minute-men, 
who assembled at the news of the British approach, bringing 
powder and shot and food enough for ten days or a fort- 
night. When any distance had to be traversed, they marched, 
like the North Carolina detachment en route northward, driv- 
ing a herd of cattle before them with sacks of meal across their 
backs, milking the €ows and killing the steers as need dic- 
tated, with the belief that the herd would last as long as the 
march. Naturally the speed of the march was limited to the 
slow pace of the cows. Once on the field they worried the 
English column as long as their supplies lasted and then went 



\\*HY WE WON THE REVOLUTION 135 

home, leaving the task of defense to the minute-men of the 
pext county ; and, inasmuch as they were all equally innocent 
of tactics and discipline, Burgoyne or Cornwallis found him- 
self constantly face to face with a fresh body of men, quite 
as efficient as those who had just gone home. Desertions and 
short enlistments in fact worked little permanent injury to the 
American cause. On the other hand, the fact that the Eng- 
lish forces consisted of regular troops whose identity could 
not change, whose food must be supplied them, brought all 
the British generals into contact with formidable problems. 
The difficulties were great enough in the settled parts of the 
country, because enough food was not always for sale; but 
when the campaign was carried into the wilds of the Hudson 
and the hills of the Blue Ridge, Burgoyne or Cornwallis found 
that the sagacious Schuyler or the wily Greene had either 
carefully collected all the food or led him where there was 
none to collect. Nor could the British generals cheerfully sit 
down to roasted sweet potatoes as Marion did, or cabbage 
and bacon with Washington. They traveled with their wines 
and scorned the homely but nutritious dishes of cornmeal 
raush, and the peas, beans, and turnips to which the Ameri- 
cans were accustomed; such food, declared one irate officer, 
was fit only for s^\ane. The soldiers, too, refused such fare 
and grumbled and became mutinous if the grog ran short. 
Before the Saratoga and Southern campaigns were over, how- 
ever, they were all glad to eat anything they could get. 

In addition, the rough ground on which the Americans of- 
fered battle puzzled the English, and the American generals, 
quickly noting this trouble, began soon the systematic use of 
hills, fences, woods, and field entrenchments for the first time 
in organized warfare. Nor were they ashamed to do what the 
English thought cowardly — "hide" in ditches and behind 
walls ; nor to do what the English declared contrary to civilized 
warfare, — pick off sentries and troops on the march. Gates 
at Boston was extremely indignant to find sharpshooters in 
the Cambridge marshes shooting at his officers walking on the 
ramparts for a little fresh air, and Burgoyne at Saratoga was 



136 THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 

vastly annoyed at the constant popping of guns through the 
night which disturbed his slumbers and at the cannon-balls 
that swept his dinner from the table. But the Americans 
were not playing a game, where among the forces on the other 
side were also mercenaries, like the Hessians, and where 
neither army was, therefore, desirous of exposing the other to 
any risks not unavoidable. They were fighting to win and 
considered any means legitimate that would gain the end in 
view. Instead of being taught in the European style, that 
the musket was too inaccurate a weapon to be of use except for 
volley-firing, and that therefore anything more than an ap- 
proximate aim was valueless, Morgan's sharpshooters were ac- 
customed to a style of fighting where they had to kill their man 
or be killed themselves. 

The tactics of the Americans, however, were not nearly so 
deadly in effect as the result of the rough ground on the 
British tactics. There were no orders in the manual for climb- 
ing fences or for sending parts of the column around opposite 
sides of the same boulder, and the formations of the regulars 
were usually so disorganized by the obstacles nature had left 
in their path that the weight of the charge had been expended 
before the moment of impact. The equipment of the British, 
complete and admirable for a European campaign, was also 
a positive hindrance in America. The red woolen shirts, the 
heavy fur or felt hats, the heavy knapsacks and boots were 
not intended for a hot July day with the thermometer at 
ninety degrees. Burgoyne ordered a body of heavy dragoons, 
men so heavily equipped that they were meant always to ride, 
to march on foot through the hills and fields of southern Ver- 
mont in midsummer. By the time they reached Bennington 
they were exhausted from the heat of their clothing plus the 
heat of the sun and were in no condition to fight a battle 
with Colonel Stark and his men clad only in jeans and shirt- 
sleeves. 

The most puzzling thing to the English, however, became, 
as the war progressed, the willingness of the Americans to lose 
the battles. They had expected the "farmers" to run at the 



WHY WE WON THE REVOLUTION 137 

first fire, and the Americans had entertained similar anticipa- 
tions. The patriotic joy over Concord and Bunker Hill 
brushed aside what seemed minor features, such as the fact 
that the English voluntarily withdrew to Boston and that 
Bunker Hill was a great defeat, in its elation over the fact 
that the minute-men had dared to follow the English into 
Boston, and had compelled the regulars to dislodge them from 
behind the rail fence. No one at the time thought either 
battle accomplished anything, but nearly every one enter- 
tained the wildest expectations of future prowess. Long Is- 
land and White Plains, however, convinced Washington and 
Greene that pitched battles were undesirable except as demon- 
strations of the American determination to resist. They per- 
fectly well understood that the most essential thing was to 
keep an army in the field until aid could come and until the 
natural factors working in our favor should become effective ; ^® 
they well knew that in every pitched battle they risked losing 
the cause without a proportionate chance of winning it. They 
realized, too, that the English did not dare injure them too 
much and that conquest attained by laying waste the country 
was not to be feared. Whatever might be done as an ex- 
ample of possibilities, there would be no general campaign on 
such principles. They came in fact to see that so long as the 
army remained intact, the loss of the battle involved merely a 
shift of position. Greene reduced the losing of battles to a 
science in his operations in the South in 1780, Realizing that 
a third of his raw army would run at the first fire,^° he 

19 "On our side, the war should be defensive (it has even been called 
a war of posts) that we should on all occasions avoid a general action, 
nor put anything to risk, unless compelled by a necessity into which 
we ought never to be drawn. . . . Experience has given her sanction. 
. . , Being persuaded it would be presumption to draw out our young 
troops into open ground against their superiors both in number and 
discipline, I have never spared the spade and pickaxe. I confess I 
have not found that readiness to defend even strong posts at all haz- 
ards, which is necessary to derive the greatest benefits from them. . . . 
The wisdom of cooler moments and experienced men have decided that 
we should protract the war if possible." Washington to the President 
of Congress, Sept, 8, 1776. Writinrrs of Washington, Ford's ed., IV, 392. 

20 The militia seems always to have been unsteady, "Every measure 



138 THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 

placed them in the first rank with orders to fire one volley be- 
fore they ran or the second rank would shoot them. The sec- 
ond and third ranks, placed at wide intervals, were to let the 
fugitives through, and when the English appeared, offer some 
resistance themselves, and then retreat before they themselves 
were harmed. The third rank, composed of experienced 
troops, would cover the flight of their less enthusiastic com- 
rades. The battle would always be lost, but ten miles up the 
road, Greene would find his army quite as before, save for the 
breath lost in running. Thus a blow was struck at the British 
wdthout danger to himself, Cornwallis was led further and 
further from his source of supplies in the fleet cruising along 
shore, was decoyed into the hills where there was little if any- 
thing to eat, and further and further north toward the gen- 
eral field of action where Greene could expect some support. 
The whole campaign is a marvelous example of how wars 
can be won without good armies and without winning 
battles. 

After six years of fruitless operations, each of which found 
the Americans better equipped and drilled, more strongly 
placed, and with a better administration and a larger body of 
supporters, the English came to the conclusion that, to suc- 
ceed, a conquest of the country must be executed with the ut- 
most severity by an army double in number their total force 
then in the field and that a huge army of occupation must then 
be left behind. Such a price was out of the question, and 
there were serious doubts in London whether the payment even 
of that price would attain the object of the war. To conquer 
America at the point of the bayonet would effectually put an 
end to all harmonious relations. The Treaty of Paris signed 
in 1783 recognized the independence of the thirteen States, and 

on our part, however painful the reflection is from experience, is to be 
formed with some apprehension that all our troops will not do their 
duty." Washington to the President of Congress, Sept. 8, 1776. Hid., 
p. 391. "The militia fled at the first fire"; they are "incapable of mak- 
ing or sustaining a serious attack." Washington, circular letter to the 
States, Oct. 18, 1780. Ibid., VIII, 506. See also the emphatic state- 
ments in letters of 12 and 15 September 1780. 



WHY WE WON THE REVOLUTION 139 

handed over to them the continent south of the Great Lakes, 
east of the ^lississippi, and north of a rather indeterminate 
line very nearly that of the present southern boundary of 
Tennessee. 



XI 

THE EESULTS OF THE REVOLUTION 

In 1781, John Adams, then Minister to Holland, prepared a 
pamphlet called Twenty-six Letters to explain to European 
bankers that the astonishing but entirely desirable result of 
the war had been to enrich and strengthen the thirteen States. 
The number of men was, he declared, scarcely impaired; the 
resources of the country barely touched ; the economic de- 
velopment of the older communities had not been retarded; 
the westward march had continued at an even more rapid 
pace. "America, notwithstanding the war, daily increases in 
strength and force." "America could indubitably maintain a 
regular army of twenty thousand men forever. ' ' Subsequent 
investigation has amply confirmed these observations. The 
highest estimate of population in 1760 put the figure well 
under two millions; the first census of 1790 estimated it at 
four millions. There was not even a forswearing of luxuries, 
if the observation of contemporaries is trustworthy.^ "The 
extravagant luxury of our Country," wrote Franklin in 1779, 
' ' in the midst of all its distresses, is to me amazing. When the 
difficulties are so great to find Remittances to pay for the 
Arms and Ammunition necessary for our Defence, I am as- 
tonish 'd and vex'd to find upon Enquiry, that much the 

1 "I could demonstrate, to every mind open to conviction, that in lesa 
time, and with much less expense than has been incurred, the war 
might have been brought to the same happy conclusion, if the resources 
of the continent could have been properly drawn forth; that the dis- 
tresses and disappointments, which have very often occurred, have in 
too many instances resulted more from a want of energy in the con- 
tinental government than a deficiency of means in the several particular 
States." Washington, circular letter to the Governors of the States, 
June 8, 1783. 

140 



THE RESULTS OF THE REVOLUTION 141 

greatest Part of the Congress Interest Bills come to pay for 
Tea, and a great Part of the Remainder is ordered to be laid 
out in Gewgaws and Superfluities. ' ' At least as much tea was 
being bought as before the war, an amount, he thought, not 
short of £500,000 a year. "Five Hundred Thousand Pounds 
Sterling annually laid out in defending ourselves, or annoy- 
ing our Enemies, would have great Effects. With what Face 
can we ask Aids and Subsidies from our Friends, while we 
are wasting our own Wealth in such Prodigality ? " ^ Wash- 
ington complained bitterly and repeatedly of the farmers who 
declined to sell grain to the American army and carted it to 
Philadelphia and New York to sell it for British gold.* He 
wrote of "officers, seduced by views of private interest . . . 
to abandon the cause of their country. " * " If I were to be 
called upon to draw a picture of the times and of men, from 
w^hat I have seen, heard, and in part know, I would in one 
word say, that idleness, dissipation, and extravagance seem to 
have laid fast hold of most of them ; that speculation, pecula- 
tion, and an insatiable thirst for riches seem to have got the 
better of every other consideration and almost every order of 
men. "^ " The spirit of venality, ' ' wrote John Adams, ' ' is the 
most dreadful and alarming enemy America has to op- 
pose. ... I am ashamed of the age I live in. " ® 

Nor is the seeming inconsistency of this most striking result 
of the war hard to reconcile with our earlier notions of the 
result. The picture of war which naturally rises before our 
eyes depicts murder, pillage, and general desolation. An 
army would, of course, devour everything. During the Revo- 
lution, however, the armies were at no time large and, there- 
fore, were not unduly burdensome to the community in the 

2 The Life and Writings of Benjamin Franklin, A. H. Smyth, VII, 
391, 291. See also pp. 83, 258, 408. 

3 See supra, p. 125, note. See also Connecticut Public Records, I, 528; 
Rhode Island Records, VII, 388; Delaware Session Laws, May 20, 1778. 

* Writings of Washington, Sparks's ed., V, 305, 312, 313, 322, 351 j 
VI, 168. 

6 Writings of Washi7igton Ford's ed., VII, 388. 
« Familiar Letters, 232. 



142 THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 

strictest sense of the words. Both realized that pillage or 
foraging would throw many waverers into the ranks of their 
enemies, and, from motives of policy, both conducted the war 
with a view to avoiding all possible cause of complaint from 
non-combatants. Indeed, far from being a hardship to the 
Americans, the presence of the British army was a positive 
blessing. For the first time in colonial history, a large and 
steady market for the produce easily raised in America was 
located at the farmer's very door; and the British paid him 
not in bills on London which turned out to be bad, or in de- 
preciated silver or in paper currency, but in gold at sterling 
rates. Probably there was more actual coin in America in 
1783 than ever before.'' The farmers charged war prices, sold 
more than ever before, and waxed rich as the war continued, 
especially in the Middle States where the British occupation 
lasted several years. The American armies also paid, and 
their paper promises were not long afterwards funded at par. 
Business was good during the Revolution ; the community un- 
deniably grew wealthy. 

At the same time, many and many an individual suffered 
severely. English privateers captured the merchants ' vessels ; 
conunittees of correspondence confiscated the estates of exiles 
and loyalists, and compelled merchants to accept the nearly 
worthless paper money from the patriots at a tariff which in 
many cases amounted to the confiscation of the goods. ' ' Per- 
sons who refused to sell their lands, houses, or merchandize for 
nearly worthless paper were stigmatized as misers, traitors, 
forestallers, and enemies of liberty. . . . Stores were closed 
or pillaged; and merchants were mobbed, fined, or impris- 
oned,"^ tarred and feathered, or ridden on rails. The war 
automatically suspended the collection of debts owed by Ameri- 

7 "Tho' the public treasury was so very poor and distressed, yet 
the States were really overrun with an abundance of cash: the French 
and English armies, our foreign loans, Havanna trade, etc., had filled 
the country with money, and bills [of exchange] on Europe were cur- 
rently sold at 20 to 40 per cent below par." Peletiah Webster, Political 
Essays, 267. Philadelphia, 1791. 

8 Bullock, Monetary History of the United States, 60. 



THE RESULTS OF THE REVOLUTION 143 

cans abroad,** and, as these liabilities far exceeded in amount 
the money which foreigners owed Americans, the country 
as a whole was again made richer by the war, for no arrange- 
ment was ever subsequently made to liquidate any consider- 
able part of the pre-revolutionary debts. Of course, the debts 
owed the loyalists and exiles were promptly repudiated or 
confiscated. In all these ways, very considerable amounts 
of property changed hands, and made many individuals much 
richer than before at the expense of a comparatively small 
number of other individuals. The transfer from loyalist to 
patriot, of course, in no way lessened the total assets of the 
community, while the repudiation of foreign debts actually 
added great sums to the community's wealth. 

The general fall of values and the equally general rise in 
prices coupled to the existence of large amounts of depreciated 
currency suggested to many of the unscrupulous, — whose ex- 
istence in past epochs is a constant source of amazement to 
many who are familiar with the existence of that type of 
man to-day — the payment of debts incurred at the old scale 
of prices in the new paper money. Guardians and trustees 
accounted in paper for the funds entrusted to them in specie, 
and thus were able to embezzle the greater part. "For two 
or three years," wrote Witherspoon, "we constantly saw and 
were informed of creditors running away from their debtors, 
and debtors pursuing them in triumph and paying them with- 
out mercy ! ' ' The lack of a suitable medium of exchange thus 
deprived all people dependent on a salary or on a fixed income 
from investment of the great bulk of their fortunes. Every 
one, too, in whose hands paper money depreciated in value 
lost considerable sums. These indirect consequences of the 

There was no reason why it should have done so, save that most 
Americans believed themselves no longer liable because political inde- 
pendence would effectually prevent collection through the English courts 
or by English law^, and naturally, until the war was over, no new 
system for collection would be erected. Tlie general sentiment in favor 
of repudiation of public and private debts was overwhelmingly strong 
in 1783. With these diflSculties the Confederation struggled feebly and 
in vain. 



144 THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 

Eevolution certainly brought distress to many, who usually 
least deserved it, but who were on the whole best able to bear 
it. 

During the Revolution, then, the general resources of the 
community were enormously increased by agriculture and 
commerce; the war destroyed little and added appreciably to 
the wealth of the country and to its store of gold ; the wealth 
was redistributed and in general equalized among individuals, 
very much to the advantage of those who had been poor, 
very much to the detriment of those who had been rich. The 
latter seem to have been the ones really to suffer from the 
war, and were chiefly loyalists and in many cases exiles. 
They and the foreign and domestic creditors of Congress and 
of the States paid for the Revolution, for the confiscated prop- 
erty was never restored, and most of the original holders of 
the Revolutionary debt sold their bonds or certificates at heavy 
loss, when the very general repudiation of the Revolutionary 
indebtedness at the end of the war convinced them that the 
debt would never be paid and that they would do well 
to sell before the evidences of their loans lost all market 
value. 

The Revolution had been a war between England and 
America, between parties in England and between parties in 
America, and the issue had been the institution of a central 
administration in America sufficiently powerful to enforce the 
new policy which Parliament had adopted for the creation of 
a greater Britain. Something more had divided parties than 
the bare question whether or not England should play a part, 
decisive or otherwise, in the settlement of questions in 
America. The immediate result of the American victory was, 
therefore, something more than the decision that the two 
countries should hereafter be separate and that Americans 
should formulate policy for themselves without British assist- 
ance or interference. In England, the American victory was 
a victory for the peace party who had throughout declared 
the policy on which the war had been conducted a mistake. 
The winning of the war gave control in America to the 



THE RESULTS OF THE REVOLUTION 146 

radicals, to the anti-national party, opposed on principle to 
the adoption of the English notion of strong central govern- 
ment. It also immensely strengthened the anti-national party 
and weakened in numbers, in wealth, and in the proportion 
of capable and educated men amongst them, the creditor 
and conservative parties which believed in strong govern- 
ment. 

The number of loyalists expatriated was probably about 
one hundred thousand, most of whom had been people of 
culture and property, who had normally counted on the side 
of law, order, and justice. Very considerable amounts of 
property had also been changed during the war by both 
political and economic forces from the hands of the conserva- 
tives to those of the radicals. The proportion of educated 
men in the country was not as large as it had been ; the total 
wealth of the conservative class was far less than before. 
The radical party had not only gotten into the saddle in 
State, town, and county, but had possessed itself in all proba- 
bility of the bulk of the movable property, and was anxious 
to continue conditions which worked so greatly to its ad- 
vantage.^" The party of strong government and especially of 
national government, as we understand it, had been com- 
pletely vanquished by the party of loose government and of 
States ' rights. The victory of the radicals in the ' ' civil war, ' ' 
in fact, was too complete, as was soon to appear. 

Had the Revolution, however, decided the various issues 
over which it had nominally been fought? Had it proved 
England wrong in all her contentions, shown George III to 
have been a bloodthirsty tyrant and Lord North an oppressor ? 
"Were the loyalists all traitors and was their property forfeit? 
The radicals insisted with vehemence that victory had demon- 
strated the truth of all their contentions, legal, historical, 

10 "It is more consistent with the views of the speculators — ^various 
tribes of nioney-makers and stock-jobbers of all denominations — to con- 
tinue the war for their own private emolument without considering 
that their avarice and thirst for gain must plunge everything, includ- 
ing themselves, in one common ruin." Washington to George Mason, 
March 27, 1779. Writings of Washington, Ford's ed., VII, 382. 



146 THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 

political, and ethical. The legacy of the Revolution was a 
hatred of England and of English ways which for many dec- 
ades colored all policies and politics. 

The war had been fought with England over an issue of 
administration and organization. It had been a war to main- 
tain the superiority of State governments over any central 
government, a war to prevent the erection of a central 
government, a war to support a distinctly anti-national policy. 
To the radicals, therefore, the winning of the Revolution de- 
cided that the States were supreme and a central government 
inexpedient. Were the patriots who had fought and bled for 
the independence of their own particular States to admit that 
the war had succeeded and had vested in King Congress the 
powers of King George 1 If so, they had exchanged a tyrant 
three thousand miles away, who was, after all, slow and stupid, 
for a many-headed hydra at their very doors, insatiable in its 
demands for money and authority. For what, then, had they 
fought? Again, the war had been waged to prevent the ex- 
ercise by any central authority of the right of taxation and 
the right to control commerce. Had not the winning of the 
war definitely vested the exclusive exercise of these powers in 
the several States, and as definitely decided once and for all 
that no central government ought ever to possess them ? If the 
Revolution had not settled the issues in these ways, what had 
it decided? Nothing? 

Nevertheless, the Revolution actually decided none of the 
great questions out of which it had arisen. It decided merely 
that England and the conservatives in America should have 
no share in their decision. The anti-national party assumed 
the direction of policy and was not slow to announce and ap- 
ply its characteristic remedies to the solution of all difficulties. 
Were the men who had won the Revolution unable to cope 
with the problems of freedom? The key they applied to all 
perplexities was the old colonial conception — States' sover- 
eignty. Neither the Revolution itself nor any specific act 
done during it or because of it seemed to the radicals to have 
created a nation or to have even established the desirability 



THE RESULTS OF THE REVOLUTION 147 

of creating one." ''It seems certain that at no time during 
the Revolution was there a stronger desire for national unity 
than for the continued sovereignty of the several States. ' ' ^^ 
The central government was to be rather a common mouth- 
piece, a sort of formal head, a convenient method of express- 
ing the decisions of the States, than a government empowered 
to act for them. 

During the war, the States had one and all exercised the 
familiar attributes of sovereignty.^^ Virginia made and rati- 
fied a treaty with France; established a clerkship of foreign 
correspondence; sent over an agent to various countries to 
borrow money and buy arms ; negotiated formally with Spain 
for a war loan ; sent George Rogers Clark into the West to 
take possession of the land in the name of the Commonwealth 
of Virginia. Nine of the States built navies of their own and 
all enlisted armies ; aU of them struck coins and issued paper 
money; most of them regulated commerce by the imposition 
of tariffs and of embargoes. These powers they continued to 
exercise after the Articles of Confederation had been formally 
ratified in 1781 and after the Treaty of Peace had been signed 
in 1783. Neither one event nor the other, to the thinking of 
the men in control of the State governments, produced any 
change in the relation of the States to each other or to a cen- 

11 "A selfish habitude of thinking and reasoning leads us into a fatal 
error the moment we begin to talk of the interests of America. The 
fact is, by the interests of America we mean only the interests of 
that State to which property or accident has attached us. Thus a citi- 
zen of Philadelphia, when he harangues on the rights and liberties of 
America, is not aware the while that he is merely advocating the rights 
and liberties of Pennsylvania. And our fellow-citizen here, . . . lead 
him to the westernmost banks of the Hudson . . . and his heart is as 
cold and unconcerned as to the interests of Kouli Khan or the Nabob 
of Arcot." Neuy York Packet, August 30, 1784. Quoted by McMaater, 
History of the People of the United States, I, 136. 

12 Van Tyne, The American Revolution, 177-8. 

13 C. H. Van Tyne has given an admirable resume of the evidence in 
the American Historical Review, XII, 529-545. See also the selections 
quoted in Hart's American History Told by Contemporaries, III, 124- 
137. E\'en a casual reference to any source of the period will hardly 
fail to be rewarded with significant examples. 



148 THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 

tral government. Congress was to assume the position which 
the radicals had desired George III to occupy: — that of as- 
sisting and advising the several States. Indeed, there was 
little disposition to admit in America that the Declaration of 
Independence had done more than enounce the actual condi- 
tion of affairs or that the war had accomplished more than 
the prevention of the unwarranted extension of authority pro- 
posed and attempted by England. The States were still 
sovereign as they always had been; in their several hands 
rested the solution of the difficulties, and they believed them- 
selves as capable of deciding upon and executing such meas- 
ures as their own welfare and safety demanded as they had 
already been for a century and more. That the growth of 
the country during the preceding century and even during 
the war had made some common action and agreement indis- 
pensable, only a few individuals seem to have grasped. 

The solution proposed by the radical anti-national party 
was, therefore, simplicity incarnate, — the States should in- 
dividually deal as they thought best with such matters as 
seemed to them to require action, and should signify to Con- 
gress what action they deemed necessary in questions re- 
quiring cooperation. There seems to have been a rather gen- 
eral expectation that the remedies for the various difficulties 
would evolve themselves from circumstances, for no action 
was taken on most questions. 

The fear that the Americans would be excluded from the 
West India trade and the Newfoundland fisheries had been 
one of the motive forces of the Revolution. The war over, 
most men seem to have expected that the old status would be 
reestablished and that the Americans would continue as be- 
fore to smuggle at will, unhampered now by English revenue 
officers and administrative restrictions. They had fought to 
obtain that privilege, and, having won the war, was the sug- 
gestion to be credited that the prize was not theirs ? 

The pay of the army which had won the war was some 
years in arrears, and the officers and men, who had been 
held together by promises of prompt payment upon the sue- 



THE RESULTS OF THE REVOLUTION 149 

cessful conclusion of the war, were already manifesting some- 
thing more than impatience at the non-fulfilment of the 
promises. The interest payments on the debts incurred dur- 
ing the war by Congress and by the several States were al- 
ready overdue, and in many cases payment of the capital had 
been promised on the successful completion of the war. A 
uniform and stable currency was desperately needed to re- 
place the worthless paper which no longer circulated at all. 
In addition, the Treaty of Peace contained promises made by 
Franklin and other ambassadors, concerning the payment of 
the debt, public and private, the restoration of the property of 
loyalists, the repeal of the acts passed during the war which 
deprived the latter of all rights, legal or social, in the com- 
munity, and the prompt adjustment of the boundary diffi- 
culties in the "West. 

Incredible as it may seem, the anti-national. States '-sover- 
eignty party was in favor of disbanding the army without pay 
and without the fulfilment of one of the many promises made 
to both officers and men. The army very naturally refused 
with considerable heat to disband and remained in the neigh- 
borhood of Philadelphia for some years, grumbling and threat- 
ening Congress, while the States blithely continued to disre- 
gard their obligations to the men who had actually fought the 
war. Inasmuch as none of the various creditors, foreign or 
domestic, possessed any method of exacting payment of the 
principal or the interest of the Revolutionary debt, the 
radicals calmly repudiated all their obligations and declined to 
vote a penny to Congress for any such purpose, or indeed for 
any purpose at all.^* To cap the climax of this policy of 

i*On Nov. 5, 1786, Washington wrote Madison a description. of con- 
ditions in New England as reported to him by General Knox, who had 
been sent by Congress to investigate the situation. "Among other 
tilings he says: 'Their creed is, that tiie property of the United States 
has been protected from the confiscation of Britain by the joint exer- 
tions of all; and therefore ought to be the common property of all; 
and he that attempts opposition to this creed, is an enemy to equity 
and justice, and ought to be swept from off the face of the earth.' 
Again: 'They are determined to annihilate all debts, public and private, 
and have agrarian laws, which are easily effected by the means of 



150 THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 

laissez-faire, none of the States executed the solemn promises 
of the Treaty of Peace and enough were always opposed to 
any action on the part of Congress to prevent fulfilment by 
the Confederation. From whatever motive, whether from 
policy or from preoccupation with other problems, nothing 
whatever was done. The consequences of this universal appli- 
cation of the anti-national remedy of States' sovereignty to 
the difficulties confronting America were all too soon appar- 
ent. "How melancholy is the reflection," wrote Washing- 
ton to Madison on November 5, 1786, "that in so short a space 
we should have made such large strides towards fulfilling the 
predictions of our transatlantic foes! 'Leave them to them- 
selves and their government will soon dissolve.* Will not 
the wise and good strive hard to avert this evil? Or will 
their supineness suffer ignorance and the arts of self-inter- 
ested, designing, disaffected and desperate characters to in- 
volve this great country in wretchedness and contempt ? ' ' ^^ 

unfunded paper money, which shall be a tender in all cases whatever.' " 
Writings of Washington, Ford's ed., XI, 81-2. 
^6 Ibid., p. 82. 



XII 

THE CRITICAL PERIOD 

From the war, the radicals had expected great things. Once 
the shackles of the tyrant had been struck off, Liberty would 
ensure her admirers happiness and prosperity. Yet, with the 
Treaty of Peace scarcely signed, with the policy of the thirteen 
new sovereigns barely promulgated, and the perpetuity of 
the new Confederation between them little more than de- 
clared, it became only too apparent that the country was 
worse off than it had been before. Whatever might be the 
theoretical merits of the new type of government, certainly 
its practical results were disastrous. The policy of laissez- 
faire, of disregarding problems, simply did not work. The 
army refused to disband and continued to live in the vicinity 
of Philadelphia to the great discontent of the farmers of the 
district. The difficulties resulting from the lack of a stable 
currency grew steadily worse and not better. The failure to 
pay the interest or principal of the old debt made impossible 
the borrowing of money. The English were by no means will- 
ing to dispense with the fulfilment of the promises in the 
Treaty of Peace about the western lands, while the all-impor- 
tant trade privileges in the West Indies and off Newfoundland 
could not be obtained by a weak and discredited government, 
which had thus far defaulted every payment and broken every 
promise. 

The pressure of national. State, and local issues for settle- 
ment was great in 1783 and was growing obviously greater; 
the economic and social problems demanding honest and sin- 
cere effort were numerous. The chief difficulties were, how- 
ever, two : — the lack of honest, able, consistent administration 
in the States and in the central government, and the existence 

151 



152 THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 

of the first commercial crisis, due partly to the economic tangle 
caused by the war, but largely to the lack of a reliable medium 
of exchange either with Europe or between the various States. 
In fact, the difficulties were economic rather than administra- 
tive, were indeed superficial rather than fundamental, and 
resulted from administrative carelessness and inefficiency, 
from the policy of repudiation and of ignoring vital prob- 
lems. The truly fundamental difficulties lay in the economic 
position of the States in relation to each other, to the West 
Indies, and to Europe. Nor would the administrative de- 
ficiencies alone have been so serious had they not coincided 
with the commercial crisis. All the difficulties, temporary and 
fundamental, economic and administrative, were accentuated, 
magnified, and multiplied by the attempts of the radicals to 
solve them. Before peace was a year old, it was clear to the 
leaders and was constantly becoming apparent to a larger 
and larger section of the community, that the radical solution, 
based on the theoretical and administrative contentions over 
which the war had been fought, was a hopeless and irredeem- 
able failure. 

The economic crisis was the result of production far in 
excess of local needs coupled with a very general lack of ade- 
quate means of exchange and distribution. As has already 
been explained, the Atlantic coast produced chiefly staple 
goods — cod-fish, lumber, flour, horses, — for which no adequate 
market existed in other colonies, which were (except for to- 
bacco) too bulky to ship to Europe, and which would usually 
be sold only in the West Indies. At the same time, the manu- 
factured articles, upon which the Americans depended and 
which they bought so largely, must come from Europe. We 
were then in the extremely unfortunate economic position 
of producing what we could not consume and what the 
makers of the only articles we really wished to buy would not 
accept in exchange. The prosperity of the new sovereign 
States was absolutely dependent upon the ability to sell in the 
West Indies and to purchase the sugar and molasses which 
Europe so greedily bought. A principal incitement to re- 



THE CRITICAL PERIOD 153 

sistance in 1775 had been the knowledge that all the West 
India sugar islands together barely furnished the Atlantic sea- 
board with an adequate market for its growing volume of 
produce, and that the exclusion of the Americans from the 
foreign sugar islands and the restriction of their trade to the 
English sugar colonies would prevent the further expansion 
of American trade, if it did not immediately glut the market 
and send prices tumbling. To retain the freedom of trade 
with all the West India Islands, English, French, Spanish, 
Dutch, and Danish, had been the best reason for the refusal to 
obey the Navigation Acts, the Sugar Act of 1764, and the 
English administrative regulations, and was one of the really 
cogent reasons for fighting the war at all. 

Apparently, the Americans had expected their victory to 
result in a more complete freedom of intercourse with the rest 
of the world, and they learned with scarcely feignable as- 
tonishment that they had lost their rights in the English sugar 
islands and in the cod-fisheries off the Grand Banks without 
gaining any rights in the sugar colonies of other nations.^ 
They found that they had no rights anywhere; that every 
American vessel in the West Indies was seizable by virtue of 
some European regulation; the English proposed to allow no 
ships to trade with their colonies except English vessels, and 
the American ships were now "foreign." The loss of their 
rights on the Grand Banks in particular was a heavy blow 
to the New England states, the more severe because it had 
apparently not been foreseen; it robbed them at a stroke of 
their staple for export and hence stopped their trade at its 
source. The Americans had fought the war to avoid com- 
mercial ruin; had won it, and found themselves doubly and 
trebly ruined, worse off for exchange than they had ever been 
before. 

During the war, the armies had eaten and utilized an ap- 
preciable part of the produce of the country; the smuggling 
trade had been briskly plied to the West Indies and the war 
prices had helped to lessen the distress. But the astonishing 

1 Channing, History of the United States, III, 408-413. 



154 THE RISE OF THE MIERICAN PEOPLE 

prosperity of the country during the war and the good 
market at home had stimulated production, and the output in 
the last' years of the war and immediately after was far too 
great to find vent through the smuggling trade. America 
was producing more than could be sold at a profit, and pros- 
perity itself caused a fall of values and of prices and resulted 
in a widespread distress which the Americans could not at 
all comprehend. The old system of exchange with Europe 
and between the various States had been completely dislo- 
cated by the war. The English privateers and cruisers had 
captured many merchantmen and had thus preceptibly weak- 
ened the American merchant marine. Many prominent mer- 
chants, whose ability and experience had made the complex 
round of voyages a profitable and adequate outlet for Ameri- 
can produce, had been exiled, robbed of their property and 
position, and their places were either not yet filled or M^ere 
occupied by nouveaux riches quite incapable of rendering the 
same service. 

To reestablish the old routes proved to be unexpectedly dif- 
ficult. The very general failure of American merchants, 
whether from inability or design, to meet their obligations in 
England contracted before the war, caused a not unnatural 
reluctance on the part of the English houses, who had lost 
heavily, to reopen old accounts or accept new, and deterred 
others from engaging in American exchange. From the 
numerous loyalists and exiles in London came tales of robbery 
and confiscation which made even speculators pause before 
trusting Americans. Nor was the English ministry willing 
to concede the Americans as successful revolutionists the very 
terms which the latter had rejected in 1778. They listened 
coldly to the proud colonists who had disdainfully tossed one 
side, as if of no value, their unlimited privileges under the 
Navigation Acts, and who were now suing for some very lim- 
ited rights in the West Indies and off the Grand Banks. 
The English deeply resented the American attitude towards 
the mother-country, and were especially indignant over the 
really unjust and tyrannical treatment meted out to the loyal- 



THE CRITICAL PERIOD 155 

ists. They were hardly in a mood to grant favors. More- 
over, as long as the States obstinately refused to accede to the 
continued requests of Congress to fulfil the terms of the 
Treaty of Peace, and as long as the Congress was only too 
obviously helpless to execute what it had solemnly agreed to 
perform, what reason was there to sign new treaties or even 
to discuss further arrangements which would still depend for 
validity upon the honorable intentions of the Americans? 
Administrative reform in America was an indispensable pre- 
requisite to the securing of such terms from England as would 
relieve the economic pressure on the new States. 

Administrative reform and a change in policy were also in- 
dispensable if trade between the States was to be reestab- 
lished. Nothing more prejudicial to it could well be con- 
ceived than the legislation passed during and just after the 
war. The States seemed indeed to be animated by the deter- 
mination to injure each other as much as possible and to pre- 
vent interstate commerce by every means in their power. 
Port regulations, embargoes, tariffs were passed by State after 
State, discriminating against their neighbors and frequently 
admitting English ships and English goods on more favorable 
terms than American.- Inasmuch as few of the States were 
in any position to deal directly with Europe and were ordi- 
narily compelled to export their produce by a series of ex- 
changes in various American ports, the difficulties sown in the 
way of commerce by these contradictory and hostile acts can 
be easily imagined. Most merchants soon came to realize that 
the enforcement to the letter of the proposed English acts, 
whose stringency had been alleged as adequate cause for re- 

2 "Massachusetts, in her zeal to counteract the effect of the English 
navigation laws, laid enormous duties upon British goods imijorted 
into that State; but the other States did not adopt a similar measure; 
and the loss of business soon obliged that State to repeal or suspend 
the law. Thus when Pennsylvania laid heavy duties on British goods, 
Delaware and New Jersey made a number of free ports to encourage 
the landing of goods within the limits of those States; and the duties 
in Pennsylvania served no purpose, but to create smuggling." Jedidiah 
Morse, 2'/ie American Geography/, 1789. Quoted in Hart's Contem' 
poraries, III, 136-7. 



166 THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 

volt, would in all probability have injured trade far less. 
"Why then, merchants began to ask, had the war been fought ? 
"Who had benefited from it? 

Nor was there a common medium of exchange in America 
by means of which trade was facilitated between the States. 
There had never been any considerable amount of coin in the 
country, and the British and French gold paid by the armies 
had been quickly hoarded or had flown away to Europe. 
Paper money in vast amounts had been issued by Congress, 
and each State had its own peculiar variety. The bulk of it, 
in Ramsay's phrase, "gently fell asleep in the hands of its 
last possessors." Men exchanged the actual cloth and shoes 
and grain and meat as in the Middle Ages before a money 
economy existed. However adequate this might be for local 
trade, it meant the complete disappearance of the budding 
commercial structure which seemed so important to Ameri- 
cans. Yet, without agreement among the States, without 
authority in the central government, how was a uniform cur- 
rency to be had? Administrative reform in America was 
from this point of view also indispensable. 

Another pregnant cause of the commercial crisis lay in 
the general dislocation of business by the attitude of the 
radicals and the debtors towards property, the courts, and 
the collection of debts. When the first loyalists had left 
New England with Howe in 1776, and when the confiscation 
and distribution of their estates had whetted the appetite 
for more, a pretty general indictment of "loyalists" had 
taken place all over the country, and large amounts of prop- 
erty had changed hands. The outbreak of hostilities had 
naturally reacted unfavorably on business; the sale of con- 
fiscated property, paper money, and the like had produced 
a vast amount of speculation and gambling in land, certifi- 
cates, and loans which had also discouraged legitimate busi- 
ness.^ Not only was it suspected that much robbery and con- 

3 "Paper currency . . . operated in the most powerful and malignant 
manner. . . . Every sordid passion of man was stimulated to the most 
vigorous exertion. Wealth, for sucli it seemed to the fancy, was ac- 



THE CRITICAL PERIOD 157 

fiscation had been thinly covered with the allegation of loyal- 
ism, that men had been exiled and brutally treated because 
they were rich or creditors of many of the mob that dealt 
with them, but the passage of acts by the legislatures con- 
doning such offenses, the practical repudiation of the pre- 
revolutionary debts owed to English merchants, the evident 
unwillingness of the radicals to agree that the Revolutionary 
debt was a valid obligation, the evident liking for paper money 
and the imposition of heavy penalties for its refusal, all 
caused the more serious to fear lest this occasional misdoing 
should be organized and legalized by the new State govern- 
ments. As the months elapsed and became years, these fears 
became greater instead of less, and were amply confirmed by 
the determination in Rhode Island to provide ' ' cheap ' ' money 
and plenty of it, by the use of force throughout the States 
to prevent the courts from collecting debts. "We are fast 
verging," wTote Washington, "to anarchy and confusion." 
"I am uneasy and apprehensive, more so than during the 
war, ' ' declared Jay. ' ' If faction should long bear down law 
and government, tyranny may raise its head and the more 
sober part of the people may even think of a king ! ' ' 

While throughout America a crisis was apparent and the 

quired with an ease and rapidity which astonished the possessor. 
The price of labor and of every vendible commodity rose in a moment 
to a height unexampled. Avarice, ambition and luxury saw their 
wishes anticipated. ... It soon became impossible for upright men to 
determine whether their bargains were honest or oppressive. . . . The 
general sense of right and obligation, in buying and selling, was gradu- 
ally lowered; and the pride of making good bargains, a soft name for 
cheating, gradually extended. \Miatever was not punishable by law 
multitudes considered as rectitude. . . . The existing government was 
peculiarly unhappy. All regular public functionaries lost during this 
period either the whole or a great part of their proper efficacy. In 
their stead, committees of inspection and correspondence assumed an 
extensive control over both the public and private affairs of their coun- 
try. The powers of these bodies were undefined, and therefore soon 
became merely discretionary. Yet they were the tribunals by which 
almost every cause was decided. In most instances they were composed 
of men, unlearned in law and unskilled in public business. . , . Very 
many and very great evils were actually produced by this government." 
Dwight, Travels in yew England and Xew York, IV, 369-371. 



158 THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 

friends of decency and order feared for the worst, nowhere 
did the radicals succeed as well as in Massachusetts, and in 
no State would their success have excited more alarm either 
among its own people or in other States. Massachusetts had 
so long been the largest Northern State; its wealth and con- 
servatism, its virtue and honesty, had already become so com- 
monly accepted as unalterable, that the outbreak of Shays 's 
Rebellion in the western part of the State in the fall of 1786 
caused the people of less orderly and stable States to believe 
that the deluge was near. The lawyers had for some time 
been assailed in Massachusetts as "pickpockets" and "blood- 
suckers" because they were aiding creditors to recover the 
debts due them ; but these ebullitions of temper became serious 
when conventions met in various towns, voted lawyers a griev- 
ance, and demanded their abolition. At Hatfield, a conven- 
tion voted to abolish the court of common pleas, which meant 
the abolition of the machinery for the collection of debts and 
for the recovery of land. It also declared in favor of an im- 
mediate issue of paper money and against the granting of any 
money to Congress. Mobs prevented the sitting of the lower 
courts in several counties, and Shays with nearly six hundred 
armed men prevented the session of the Supreme Court at 
Springfield. For some weeks, he and his disorderly crew 
terrorized Massachusetts but were finally scattered by militia 
from Boston. ' ' Our distress was so great, ' ' said Smith, speak- 
ing of this time in the Massachusetts Convention of 1788, 
"that we should have been glad to snatch at anything that 
looked like a government. ' ' * Such acts had occurred before 
and during the Revolution, the North Carolina Regulators in 
1770 being an especially noteworthy case, but in 1786 the 
crisis seemed to have come. Most men concluded that the 
alternative lay between a strong central government and 
anarchy. 

It was only too patent that the States had been unable to 
cope with the difficulties and would never be able satis- 
factorily to solve them, because the problems were not local 

4 Elliott, Debates, II, 103. 



THE CRITICAL PERIOD 159 

but general, and required for their solution unified 
action based upon a unanimity of opinion. Thirteen States 
could not negotiate for fishing rights off Newfoundland or 
privileges in the AVest Indies, though both were directly or 
indirectly necessary for the welfare of all. From bitter ex- 
perience it was clear that the States could not be induced 
individually to vote money to pay the army and to meet the 
obligations of the Confederation. The thirteen might 
conceivably agree upon uniform tariff regulations and upon a 
uniform currency, but surely a negotiation conducted through 
"ambassadors" in Congress was the most roundabout and 
cumbrous method of reaching such an agreement. Had the 
States not been so violently at odds with each other, some- 
thing might have been done. Had there been any alignment 
of States by which the large and the small could have com- 
bined or the States with western lands have united against 
those without, something might have been achieved through 
sectional governments. But the accident of geography and 
of settlement had made us, as Gerry happily said, "neither 
the same nation nor different nations."^ The large States 
were not contiguous and were also at odds over the western 
lands; the small States were hopelessly separated from each 
other by the territory of the large States, were neither all 
with or without western lands and other obvious local inter- 
ests. In all, the line of debtor and creditor, of patriot and 
loyalist, was sharp, and men were even beginning to complain 
of an opposition of interests between the Northern and the 
Southern States. The vital difficulty was that no two of these 
lines coincided; that the country was not divided geographic- 
ally into sections, vertically into creeds, parties, or interests, 
horizontally into classes. Each tiny group in every State 
hoped to secure timely assistance from its sympathizers in 
other States. There was no basis on which the jarring inter- 
ests could divide : they must perforce unite and somehow 
work out together a livable compromise. 

Nor should we forget the powerful incentive to strong cen- 

6 Hunt's Madison's ^^otes, I, 302. 



160 THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 

tral government furnished by the growing belief among the 
conservative, orderly, propertied classes that they were in 
the numerical minority in every State, and could escape de- 
stiniction only by a union of their forces and by the assistance 
which a strong central government could lend any individual 
State-government which should be too hard pressed. Private 
interests seemed likely to be more injured by the continued 
complete sovereignty of the States than they could possibly 
be by even sweeping and dictatorial authority in the hands 
of a central government. If only a government could be es- 
tablished whose policy would be the payment of the debt and 
of the army, the fulfilment of the promises in the Treaty of 
Peace, and adequate provision for foreign trade, it could 
rally to it the creditors and moneyed men throughout 
America. 

It was, however, clear beyond a shadow of doubt that the 
existing Congress did not and could not, under any such docu- 
ment as the Articles of Confederation, occupy any such posi- 
tion or furnish any such protection. The Congress in fact 
merely multiplied the difficulties and accentuated the differ- 
ences between the States, because it could only reflect the divi- 
sions of the States themselves. To most of the leaders, it was 
clear that States' sovereignty and its corollary, a weak central 
government, was the root of the trouble and made it in- 
soluble. "The great and radical vice in the construction of 
the existing Confederation," declared Hamilton, "is the prin- 
ciple of Legislation for States or Governments in their Cor- 
porate or Collective capacities and as contradistinguished 
from the individuals of which they consist."® The very at- 
tempt to discuss the general issues in thirteen different places 
and to record the conclusion in a fourteenth was in itself a 
problem of the first magnitude. "The world must see and 
feel," wrote Washington in 1785, "that the Union or the 
States individually are sovereign as best suits their purposes; 
in a word, they are one to-day and thirteen to-morrow. ' ' ^ 

6 The Federalist, XV. 

7 Marshall, Life of Washington, II, 97. 



THE CRITICAL PERIOD 161 

"The confederation appears to me to be little more than a 
shadow without the substance."* "If you tell the legisla- 
tures they have violated the treaty of peace and invaded the 
prerogatives of the confederacy, they will laugh in your 
face." It was facetiously said that the Americans had out- 
done the Trinity by making the thirteen one while leaving the 
one thirteen. 

The Confederation, in fact, was a league of friendship 
and amity rather than a government. The central body was 
really a multiple executive unable to act of itself, and com- 
pelled to wait instructions from its numerous masters before 
it could act at all. So long as the vote was taken by States, 
and State delegations disagreed or were absent, there were 
always States who were able to claim that they had not con- 
sented to this or that resolution and were therefore not bound 
by it. Although the lack of authority over commerce and of 
the power of direct taxation were almost insuperable obsta- 
cles in the way of efficient administration, the chief trouble 
— if any one thing among so many could be claimed to be 
the stumbling block of offense — was the inability of the Con- 
federation to compel the States to observe any "law" upon 
any subject, however indifferent or minute. "They (the 
Congress) may make war," wrote Jay, "but are not empow- 
ered to raise men or money to carry it on. They may make 
peace, but without power to see the terms of it observed. 
They may form alliances, but without ability to comply with 
the stipulations on their part. They may enter into treaties 
of commerce, but without power to enforce them at home or 
abroad. They may borrow money but without having the 
means of repayment. They may partly regulate commerce, 
but without authority to enforce their ordinances. They may 
appoint ministers and other officers of trust, but without 
I)ower to try or punish them for misdemeanors. They may 
resolve, but cannot execute, either with despatch or with se- 
crecy. In short, they may consult, and deliberate, and ree- 

8 Wrifings of Washmgton, Ford's ed., XT, 1. 



162 THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 

ommend, and make requisitions, and they who please may 
regard them." ^ 

Two things, each in itself insignificant, indicate how help- 
less and powerless was this Confederation. During the last 
two or three years of its life, there was not money enough 
in the treasury to provide the secretary with the pens, ink, 
and paper needed to keep a record of its deliberations! 
Since the close of the war, the army, still unpaid, had lin- 
gered in the neighborhood of Philadelphia, and one day a 
small band of about eighty men escaped from their officers 
and marched on Philadelphia to demand their pay from Con- 
gress. Into the city they marched and to Liberty Hall, 
where, after some shouting and disorder, they threw stones 
through the windows. Not a hand was raised to protect the 
central government, and the members of Congress ignomini- 
ously crawled out of the windows or escaped through the back 
door and fled across the river to Trenton. That was indeed 
a spectacle which confirmed the worst fears of Americans 
and the predictions of Europeans. "To be more exposed in 
the eyes of the world,*' wrote Washington, "and more con- 
temptible than we already are, is hardly possible." ^° 

The remedy, as the leaders saw, lay in the institution of 
a central government possessed of powers for direct taxation 
and the regulation of commerce and with a sanction of force 
behind it of sufficient weight to insure obedience to its or- 
ders. Men like Peletiah Webster propounded in pamphlets 
which attracted wide attention various forms which such a 
solution might take. From the growth of the last century 
and, indeed, of the last generation, had emerged compelling 
facts arguing the expediency and profitableness of union. 
Rapid emigration, westward movement, the general prosperity, 
had certainly quadrupled the number of people in America 
in 1700, and had easily doubled the population since 1760. 
From this growth inevitably resulted a degree of propin- 
quity which had never before existed. When the colonies were 

9 Ford, Pamphlets on the Constitution, 67. 

10 Writings of Washington, Ford's ed., XI, 77. 



THE CRITICAL PERIOD 163 

merely little groups of people scattered along a thousand 
miles of sea-coast, separated by long miles of wilderness de- 
void of roads, and dependent on tedious sea voyages for inter- 
communication, it was easy for them to maintain their sov- 
ereign independence of each other; there were few interests 
or antagonisms in which they affected each other's welfare 
vitally. Nature had separated them and made them thirteen 
and not one. But in 1783 the States impinged upon each 
other, at least along the coast, and forced upon each other 
the consideration of this matter and the decision of that. 
The lack of natural barriers between them, of geographical 
divisions of the Atlantic coast, the fact that they all occu- 
pied contiguous sections of the same watershed, drained by 
parallel rivers, gave them, whether they would or no, cer- 
tain common problems which had to be settled either by dis- 
cussion or by force. Partly because of the accident of set- 
tlement, partly because of the ignorance of geography and of 
the sort of entity desirable for a single State, the colonial 
charters had accentuated these facts by making the important 
rivers the boundaries between the States. New Hampshire 
and Massachusetts were separated by the Merrimac ; New York 
and New Jersey by the Hudson ; Pennsylvania, Delaware, and 
New Jersey by the Delaware ; Virginia and Maryland by the 
Potomac; South Carolina and Georgia by the Savannah. By 
law and custom, they owned together the only common roads 
into the interior before the days of railroads, and normally 
therefore came into contact with each other the moment the 
area of settlement attained any dimensions at all. Even 
where there were no disputes as to what the boundary was, 
the common use of the rivers made necessary some sort of a 
general consensus of opinion as to the rights of each State 
in the natural highways. 

On the whole, too, by reason of the common economic de- 
pendence of the whole Atlantic coast upon Europe for manu- 
factured articles and of the total lack of a medium of ex- 
change with Europe, the interests of all the States were sure 
to be furthered or injured together by the sort of relation- 



164 THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 

ship now to be established with foreign nations. The fact 
that economic conditions forced all the States to trade with 
each other and with Europe via the West Indies gave them 
the most powerful of possible common ties, a strong self-in- 
terest which could best be preserved or extended by a gen- 
eral agreement and common action. If the New Englanders 
could not fish off the Grand Banks, how could they buy Penn- 
sylvania flour or Virginia tobacco? Common action, a gen- 
eral agreement as to rights and policies were clearly the best 
methods of furthering and protecting the economic interests of 
individuals and of the several States. 

Moreover, the jealousies of the various States of each other, 
the fact that nearly all of them were at loggerheads with 
more than one of their neighbors, made them equally un- 
willing to leave the settlement of the more obvious problems 
to the States most nearly concerned. For all, the free navi- 
gation of the rivers without militating and conflicting regula- 
tions and preferential duties was most advantageous, and 
seemed wholly impossible unless the common highways could 
be handed over to a central government which might arbitrate 
and represent equally the claims and interests of all. 

But the western territory between the Alleghanies and the 
Mississippi, ceded by England in the Treaty of Peace, pre- 
sented the greatest difficulty. It was quite clear before the 
ink on the treaty was dry that the separate States would not 
be able to settle this question by agreements with each other. 
Before the war, settlers from Virginia and North Carolina 
had begun pushing over the mountains, and, after the war 
had begun, Patrick Henry, as Governor of Virginia, had di- 
rected the "conquest" of the land north of the Ohio by a 
Virginia ''army" under Clark. One of the old charters was 
then exhumed whose plausible interpretation vested in Vir- 
ginia the title to the whole interior of the Continent north 
of 36° 30'. Whereupon, New York produced a claim to the 
same extensive district on the ground that it was the property 
of the Iroquois tribes, and was therefore included in the 
grants to the Duke of York by Charles II. From Connecticut 



THE CRITICAL PERIOD 165 

and Massachusetts came loud cries of protest and claims to 
the whole northern part of the Missisippi Valley based upon 
their own charters. That the acceptance of any one claim 
excluded the other three was undoubted. If their respective 
claims were valid at all, they were mutually exclusive. 

The other nine States, however, resisted vehemently any 
attempt at compromise which should divide the property be- 
tween the four. The solid cause of their opposition came 
from the fact that some of them had already smaller terri- 
tories than these four States and that the existence of all the 
remainder would be vitally endangered by such an extension 
of the territory of a few. Rhode Island and Maryland feared 
conquest or absorption. Had not Plymouth and New Haven 
already been swallowed by Massachusetts and Connecticut? 
New Jersey declared herself a cask tapped at both ends by 
New York and Pennsylvania and therefore certain to be dry. 
Nor were such fears slow to produce arguments from history, 
law, and expediency. All the charters on which these claims 
were founded had long since been specifically revoked; the 
Proclamation Line of 1763 had definitely restricted the 
thirteen coast colonies to the eastern slope of the mountains; 
if the acts of the English Crown were to decide the question, 
the four claims were undoubtedly all bad. Furthermore, had 
not the Treaty of Peace ceded the land in question to the 
thirteen States in common? Had anything been said about 
the revival of charters or the extension of existing boundaries ? 

So evident was it that no division of the territory could be 
devised satisfactory to the four principals, and that no reten- 
tion of it by any of them on any terms would be counte- 
nanced by the rest of the States, that the claims of the four 
were finally ceded to the shadowy central government. Thus 
the territory between the mountains and the Mississippi be- 
came common property and its existence aided immensely the 
cause of union and of strong government. From one source 
and another had come tales of the wonderful fertility of the 
land, of the incalculable value of its trading privileges, while 
a good many of the legends so influential in encouraging the 



166 THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 

early explorers showed a surprising vitality and persistence. 
The new land was valuable, and every State began to take 
thought about the proper method of ensuring the safety of 
its interests in the common property. 

Finally, union was as eminently possible as it was desirable. 
Throughout America the population was substantially homo- 
geneous. The Teutonic stock and the Protestant religion easily 
predominated; the English common law was universally ac- 
cepted; State and local government were essentially alike in 
form and in operation. There were no fundamental geo- 
graphical, economic, racial, religious, or institutional obstacles 
to be overcome. The difficulties were superficial, not funda- 
mental, matters of form and detail, not matters of substance. 
Indeed, adequate administrative regulations and corporate 
honesty alone were needed to remedy a situation which seemed 
to superficial observers desperate. From the pens of keener 
men we have words which indicate that the situation was as 
thoroughly understood in Europe as in America. "The re- 
flections which I have just had the honor of submitting to 
you," wrote a European envoy, "scarcely conform to the 
vkgue and exaggerated reports with which almost all the Eu- 
ropean and American publications are flooded in regard to the 
situation of the United States. They confound the uncer- 
tainty of a people which has not yet chosen its form of stable 
and permanent government with disorder and internal an- 
archy, but this uncertainty is only felt abroad or in their 
political discussions without affecting in any way the tranquil- 
lity and industry of the citizens. If one studies ever so little 
the general prosperity, individual comfort, the well-nigh in- 
conceivable growth of all parts of the republic, one is tempted 
to believe that this one has taken the longest strides towards 
opulence and formidable power." 

The convention which drew up the Constitution grew out of 
the attempts of Maryland and Virginia to settle their private 
disputes by conference and compromise. After a thorough dis- 
cussion of the situation, the delegates of both States agreed 
that the adequate solution of their peculiar quarrels involved 



THE CRITICAL PERIOD 167 

the decision of too many other interstate quarrels to admit 
of the attainment of a satisfactory conclusion by themselves 
alone. Accordingly, the several States were invited to send 
representatives to Annapolis to discuss the various issues with 
a view to permanent settlement. Five States responded, whose 
delegates abandoned any attempt at agreement and coun- 
seled the summoning of a general convention at Philadel- 
phia to amend the Articles of Confederation. The sugges- 
tion was at once adopted by a majority of the States and 
the others soon named delegates. The Federal Convention 
which met in 1787, therefore, like most other important 
actions taken during the period, was the result of separate 
State action and not of an act of the central government. 
The claim of the Southern leaders in later days that the 
States, and not the nation, made the Constitution was thus 
far historically true. 



XIII 

THE CONSTITUTION 

The "wisdom of the members of the Constitutional Conven- 
tion, which sat at Philadelphia from May to September of 
1787, was in no respect more conspicuous than in their deter- 
mination to debate thoroughly and agree upon the basic 
principles of constitutional law upon which the government 
they suggested must be founded. They recognized, further- 
more, the truth of Montesquieu's contention that successful 
governments were founded upon and must be consonant 
with the economic and social conditions of the time and 
could not be based merely upon theory or precedent. 
American political democracy was consciously based upon 
the economic and social equality which the members of the 
Constitutional Convention saw existed in this country. While 
they examined with great care every form of government 
the world had known and gave particular attention to the 
Greek, Roman, and Dutch Republics, they concluded that 
the circumstances in America in 1787 were without prece- 
dent and that the results of previous attempts at democracy > 
were therefore without value. The English government many 
of them admired, and the subtlety of its working they all 
understood; but Hamilton stood practically alone in claim- 
ing that any of its elements could be profitably copied in 
America.^ The members of the Convention, in fact, fell back 
upon colonial experience and the experiments of the States 
in forming their constitutions during the Revolution for 
most of the detailed provisions of the Constitution. Presi- 

1 For Hamilton's views, see Hunt's Madison's Notes, I, 158; for the 
contrary opinions of Wilson, Madison, Piuckney, and others see Ibid., 
I, 50, 51, 98, 225, etc. 

168 



THE CONSTITUTION 169 

dent, Senate, and House, the separation of powers, the pre- 
dominance of the legislature, the weakness of the executive, 
they tried to copy from American experience. But these 
details, the purel}^ formal elements of the new government, 
were not its vital forces. 

First and foremost in importance stands the fact that 
the Constitution founded a democracy in which all men should 
be equal before the law and in which the people should be 
sovereign. This was indeed merely the legal recognition 
of an existing fact. In wealth, in birth, in education, in 
privilege, men were already on the same footing in every 
colony: the affirmations of the Declaration of Independence, 
the vital words of the Preamble of the Consitution were, 
as their form indicated, simply statements of existing facts. 
** Equality is as I contend the leading feature of the U. 
States." "A system must be suited to the habits and genius 
of the People it is to govern, and must grow out of them," 
declared Pinckney. "After all there is one, but one great 
and equal body of Citizens composing the inhabitants of this 
Country among whom there are no distinctions of rank, and 
very few or none of fortune. For a people thus circum- 
stanced are we then to form a Government. . . . These are 
I believe as active, intelligent, and susceptible of good Govern- 
ment as any people in the world. ' ' ^ 

With this equality of condition, the travelers, already 
nimierous, had been charmed. A French traveler, De 
Segur, expressed his surprise at the absence of the extremes 
of luxury and poverty to which he was accustomed in Europe. 
"All the Americans whom we met wore clothes of good 
material. Their free, frank, and familiar address, equally 
removed from uncouth discourtesy and from artificial polite- 
ness, betokened men who were proud of their own rights 
and respected those of others. ' ' To Lafayette 's astonishment, 
the inn-keeper and his wife usually sat down with him at 
table, and conversed with him intelligently on a great variety 
of subjects. He saw no magnificent mansions, with powdered 

2 Hunt's Madison's Notes, I, 225; 229-231. 



170 THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 

lackeys at the door, rode in no splendid coaches, drawn by 
prancing steeds (though there were fine equipages in the 
colonies), but found everywhere houses of wood or brick, 
simply made, gleaming with clean white paint, and furnished 
inside with a frugal elegance and an excellent taste which 
even the fastidious Frenchman was compelled to confess were 
admirable. The Comte de Segur was enthusiastic over the 
scenery and equally loud in his praise of the settled portions 
of the country. ''Sometimes I was admiring a lovely valley, 
carefully tilled, wath the meadows full of cattle; the houses 
clean, elegant, painted in bright colors, and standing in little 
gardens behind pretty fences. Abundance, comfort, and ur- 
banity everywhere." Everywhere he found cleanliness, 
everywhere he found a plenty of the hearty wholesome fare 
which in Europe was then unknown to the lower classes. In 
France, many of the peasants of 1787 were eating bread 
made out of chestnuts and acorns ground fine and mixed 
with bran. Even the middle class was glad to get rye bread, 
while fresh meat was a luxury known only to the rich. But 
in America, the farmer, the laborer, and the carpenter, as 
well as the merchant and the great planter, sat down daily 
to a dinner of fresh meat and wheat bread, and not in- 
frequently, as Rowe tells us in his diary ,^ such luxuries as 
green peas or strawberries and cream, which had already 
become characteristic American dishes. 

Next to the equality of conditions, the simplicity, honesty, 
and genuineness of life seem to have caused most remark. 
"Simplicity of manners," declared Lafayette, "the desire to 
oblige, and a mild and quiet equality are the rule everywhere." 
"The inhabitants, each and all," wrote the Corate de Segur, 
"exhibited the unassuming and quiet pride of men who had 
no master, who see nothing above them except the law, and 
who are free from the vanity, the servility, and the preju- 
dices of our European societies." Life was free; the neces- 
sities of life being easily secured, all were equal and treated 

3 The Diary of John Rowe (Massachusetts Historical Society Pro- 
ceedings, Second Series, X, 147. 



I 



THE CONSTITUTION 171 

each other like brothers. Education was widespread : most 
of the people could read, and many could write an excellent 
hand. The old dames' schools had done well in New Eng- 
land and had spread education, albeit neither very deeply 
nor very accurately, over the whole community. In the 
Middle States, the ability to read and write was common 
and in the South universal among the planters. Further- 
more, there is nothing more interesting to note in the mental 
attitude of colonial Americans than the belief, firmly planted 
in the mind of each boy, that with work and diligence he 
could become anything he wanted to be. Witness the youth- 
ful Franklin. He desired to become an author. No sooner 
said than done : he took Addison as a model ; he set to work 
rewriting the Spectator; and soon began to send contributions 
to his brother's newspaper, whose excellence attracted at- 
tention. Falling out with his brother, he did not set out 
for some place ten miles distant, but for Philadelphia, half 
across the country; and, becoming dissatisfied with prospects 
there, sailed for England. He had no money; he had no 
guardian but his own sublime self-confidence; but he neither 
hesitated nor doubted. Thirty years later he retired from 
active business, a wealthy man for life. 

This American, at once so frugal and so honest, was vehe- 
mently interested in politics. Even the servants read the news- 
I)apers, remarked one observer. Yes, and understood them 
too, added another. All classes of the community talked 
politics in season and out of season. Nor were they inter- 
ested merely in personalities about the governor or gossip 
about the love affairs of his daughter. A brief perusal of 
the Centinel or the Gazette will show the modern reader 
that our ancestors read with avidity essays, constitutional 
arguments, histories of trade, summaries of English and colo- 
nial legislation. This habit of reading and the subsequent 
discussion of tangled questions was of great value in train- 
ing the Americans for the great experiment of democratic 
government on which they were embarking. 

But in this life and in their politics they were self-centered. 



172 THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 

A Massachusetts man lived for Massachusetts, not for Eng- 
land nor for Virginia, He was patriotic but not to any 
united organization called either the British Empire or the 
United Colonies. His ignorance of affairs in Europe and 
even in other colonies was colossal. The Comte de Segur ex- 
changed opinions with the keeper of the inn where he put 
up for the night, who called himself a Colonel, and discoursed 
at great length on campaigns and farming. De Segur, stating 
in turn that his father was a general and a minister of State, 
was astounded to perceive that the Colonel did not at all 
realize what the rank of General and office of Minister of 
State implied in France. Outside of trade, the American 
cared only for politics; outside of the local politics of his 
own community, he understood little, though ready to dis- 
cuss anything with anybody. 

In the hands of such a people, the makers of the Consti- 
tution placed the sovereignty, the right to decide in the last 
resort all issues of importance. After long and heated dis- 
cussion, no Bill of Rights was included and no direct state- 
ment made that the supreme power was vested in the people 
themselves. The argument which carried the day was that 
of James Wilson, of Pennsylvania, to whose keen logical 
mind and deep understanding of the situation we owe much 
of the shape of the great document. "The preamble to the 
proposed Constitution," said he, " 'We, the people of the 
United States, do establish,' contains the essence of all the 
Bills of Rights that have been or can be devised." The 
people alone made it; the people alone might change it; the 
people in making it surrendered no jot or tittle of their 
power ; they remained superior to the Constitution. Further- 
more, by writing "the People of the United States" and not 
"the peoples of the United States," the new government was 
necessarily made a government where a body of individuals 
and not a union of States was sovereign. "A Union of the 
States," said King, "is a Union of the men composing them 
from whence a national character results to the whole. ' ' * 

* Hunt's Madison's Notes, I, 186. The preceding part of King's 



THE CONSTITUTION 173 

The new government would have jurisdiction over every man 
in America, the lack of which had been, to the thinking of 
the Convention, the old Confederation's greatest defect. 
There was, too, in the minds of the leaders no doubt that 
the sovereignty of the States which had caused during the 
Revolution and Critical period so much suffering to every one 
would be a thing of the past. The wholesale repudiation of 
debts, the coining of money, making of tariffs to exclude 
trade from the next State, raising of armies, building of 
navies and more, were explicitly forbidden, and the wording 
of the preamble took away the sovereign power of the States 
as clearly as words could. Indeed, the first drafts of the 
preamble had read, "We, the people of New Hampshire, 
Massachusetts," and so on, enumerating the States. The 
words finally adopted were indeed, as Wilson said, a whole 
treatise on sovereignty. 

The States were to be related to the national government 
through the people. Wilson explained at length "the two- 
fold relation in which the people would stand, 1, as Citizens 
of the General Government, 2, as Citizens of their particular 
State. . . . Both Governments were derived from the people 
— })Oth Avere meant for the people — both, therefore, ought to 
be regulated on the same principles. . . . The General Govern- 
ment is not an assemblage of States, but of individuals for 
certain political purposes — it is not meant for the States, 
but for the individuals composing them."^ The people, 
therefore, organized in sections formed the States; the same 
people viewed as a whole, not as parts, were the basis of 
the national government. The value and importance of the 

speech is enlightening. "He conceived that the import of the term 
'States,' 'Sovereignty,' 'national,' 'federal' had been often used and ap- 
plied in the discussions inaccurately and delusively. The States were 
not 'Sovereigns' in the sense contended for by some. . . . They could 
not make war, nor peace, nor alliances, nor treaties. ... If the States 
therefore retained some portion of their sovereignty, they had certainly 
divested themselves of essential portions of it. If they formed a Con- 
federacy in some respects — they formed a Nation in others." 
6 Hunt's Madison's Xotes, I, 233-4. 



174 THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 

States was not lost sight of. "Without their cooperation," 
Ellsworth reminded the Convention, *'it would be impos- 
sible to support a Republican Government, over so great an 
extent of Country. . . . The largest States are the worst 
governed. ... If the principles and materials of our Govern- 
ment are not adequate to the extent of these single States ; * 
how can it be imagined that they can support a single Govern- 
ment throughout the U[nited] States. The only chance of 
supporting a General Government lies in grafting it on that of 
the individual States. ' ' ^ 

But only the ultimate power was placed in the hands of 
the people. They were given only three legal duties. They 
were to choose the representatives directly; they were to 
vote for the electoral college, which would choose the Presi- 
dent and for the state legislatures which were to choose the 
Senators; they were to vote either directly or by special con- 
ventions upon all amendments to the Constitution. But in 
no other way and at no other time should they in any way 
themselves participate in administration or legislation. They 
should not govern ; they should not even constantly direct the 
hands which governed for them. They should choose a 
President, who, once inaugurated, would possess in himself 
absolute discretion in the performance of the executive work 
entrusted to him. During his term of office, no one should 
control him or dictate to him; he should be supreme. The 
people, his masters, might at the end of his term censure him 
for what he had done ; they might refuse to let him act again 
for them; but they should not legally prevent him during 
his term of office from acting at any time as he thought fit. 
Similarly, in the hands of Congress was placed the whole 
legislative power; and in the hands of the judges, the whole 
judicial power. Each branch was delegated its power by 
the people; each would be responsible to the people at the 
end of its term, but during that term the framers intended 
that each should govern for the people. The share of the 

6 That is, are not capable of governing a single State. 

7 Hunt's Madison's 2iotes, 1, 234. 



THE CONSTITUTION 175 

people should be ultimate, not immediate ; they should control 
the broader aspects of policy, not dictate the details of meth- 
ods and means. 

Nor did the framers understand that they placed this sover- 
eignty in the hands of the male citizens over twenty-one 
years of age. By a general agreement, the federal suffrage 
was left in the hands of the States, w^ho were to regulate it 
by regulating their own. There was not then, and never had 
been, in any State or colony, manhood suffrage. A property 
qualification had been nearly universal; oaths of fidelity or 
allegiance had been common; while throughout New Eng- 
land a man's moral and religious character had been closely 
scrutinized before he had been granted a share of political 
power. It was indeed true that the amount of property 
was not usually difficult to amass, nor the degree of spiritual 
excellence impossible of attainment; neither birth nor pre- 
vious condition was a permanent bar. Any man might be- 
come qualified for the suffrage ; but it was nevertheless a 
fact in 1789, not much questioned or remarked upon, indeed 
accepted as axiomatic, that the democracy viewed by the 
framers of the constitution was limited to men of property, 
education, and good character. Not till about 1840 did the 
words "People of the United States" place the sovereignty 
in the hands of the male majority which now has it. The 
franchise was in 1789 a privilege conferred by the State on 
deserving citizens; and the lack of it was not supposed to 
imply the slightest right to disobey the authorities. Bills 
of Rights and Constitutions conferred no such privileges. 

It was fully recognized that if the Federal Government 
must govern for the people, its executive arm should have 
sufficient power to act. The President's term of four years 
they believed too short to enable him to encroach upon the 
people's liberties. But that the Convention could not pos- 
sibly enumerate or even foresee the powers which would in 
the future need to be in the hands of both President and 
Congress was freely admitted and the form of the Constitu- 
tion was in large measure due to the decision, early reached, 



176 THE EISE OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 

to sketch only the broad outlines of the government and its 
powers, and permit executive, legislature, and judiciary to 
read into its broad clauses the authority which the exigencies 
of State might render imperative. "The vagueness of the 
terms," said Mr. Gorham, "constitutes the propriety of 
them. We are now establishing general principles, to be ex- 
tended hereafter into details which will be precise and ex- 
plicit. ' ' ^ The Convention contented itself, therefore, with 
enumerating the obviously necessary things which the Presi- 
dent and Congress must do, and in broad terms conferred 
upon them respectively the executive and legislative power. 
It is this aspect of the Constitution, as its framers foresaw, 
which has made it possible for us to live under it for a 
century and a quarter with so little radical change. It is 
at present the oldest written fundamental law in the world. 
The framers were, however, alive to the fact that such 
great powers, so vaguely stated, must be controlled. They 
adopted the doctrine of the separation of powers, so highly 
praised by Montesquieu, as the basis of the relations of 
the departments with each other. "It has been agreed on 
all hands," said Mason, "that an efficient Government is 
necessary : that to render it such, it ought to have the faculty 
of self-defense ; that to render its different branches effectual, 
each of them ought to have the same power of self-defense. ' ' * 
To fetter the three departments more than this would be to 
sacrifice unduly the efficiency of administration, they thought. 
A further safeguard they found in the fact that the prob- 
lems most vital in the daily life of the community were both 
explicitly and implicitly left in the hands of the States or 
the local town or county governments: there would not be 
many things which the Federal government could do which 
could much interfere with or directly injure the private citi- 
zen. The different conditions in various parts of the country 
which needed to be met in widely divergent ways made the 
division of the country into States very fortunate, and they 

8 Hunt's Madison's Notes, I, 366. 
olbid., I, 235. 



THE CONSTITUTION 177 

were anxious not to interfere with what they considered so 
happy a circumstance. In addition, the population of about 
four million souls was still very much scattered over the 
Atlantic seaboard in little groups separated still by the 
wilderness at more or less frequent intervals. A few people 
in Maine, a few in New Hampshire, and a pretty thoroughly 
settled district in Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecti- 
cut, then a considerable fringe of settlements along the Hud- 
son and Mohawk, and along the Delaware, around Chesa- 
peake Bay and along its rivers, then a gap till the North 
Carolina settlements came into view, then another gap until 
South Carolina and its rice and cotton fields came above 
the horizon to the south-bound traveler. The largest town 
of the infant country was Philadelphia with some 75,000 
souls. New York in 1776 possessed some 2500 buildings, and 
they pastured cows along lower Broadway. The chief prob- 
lems were local, not national, and must be dealt ■with by the 
States, not by the Federal government. "Were not this 
great country already divided into States," wrote Jefferson, 
"that division must be made, that each might do for itself 
what concerns itself directly and what it can so much better 
do than a distant authority. . . . Were we directed from 
Washington when to sow and when to reap, we should soon 
want bread." ^° These same facts, coupled with the rival- 
ries already conspicuous between the States, would prevent 
the Federal government from encroaching upon them and, 
what was better, prevent them from encroaching upon the 
legitimate powers of the Federal government. 

How to put power into the hands of so many people with- 
out allowing them to abuse it and destroy the national gov- 
ernment and themselves too, seemed to the members of the 
Convention their greatest problem. That the people were 
honest and capable of deciding the great issues of State wisely 
after due deliberation, few doubted. In the long run, they 
would do right, but the problem of securing sufScient time 
for them to deliberate and make up their minds was the 

10 Memoir, I, 70. London, 1829. 



178 THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 

difficult issue. The Convention finally concluded that one 
duty of the Federal government would be to stand between 
the people and the consummation of their first passionate 
desire. The Constitution should be a restraining document, 
which should create an engine capable of preventing the peo- 
ple from having their way for a number of years. Far from 
its being intended that the government should facilitate the 
expression of the popular will, it was in fact shaped so as to 
make difficult the fulfilment of popular desire. "Why has 
government been instituted at all?" asked Hamilton in the 
famous fifteenth paper of the Federalist. ''Because the pas- 
sions of men will not conform to the dictates of reason and 
justice without constraint." To some extent this determi- 
nation to restrain the people caused the Convention to omit 
mention of explicit powers as granted Congress, which it 
seemed dangerous to put firmly in the people's hands. As 
Chief Justice Marshall later phrased it, "That power might 
be abused was deemed a conclusive reason why it should not 
be conferred." 

But the framers were by no means satisfied with omission. 
To give the Senate a check on both House and President, 
they made the term of senators six years, and made it a 
permanent body of men, by allowing two-thirds to hold over 
at each election and therefore making it impossible for the 
legislatures to choose more than a third of the Senate at 
any one time to carry out some particular wish of the peo- 
ple. The House of Representatives which the people elected 
was given a term of only two years, partly to render it more 
responsive to the people, partly to allow the President, who 
sat for four years and the Senate, two-thirds of which would 
still be sitting, to control it more easily. If all three agreed 
upon some measure, it would be clear that the nation wanted 
it and ought to have its way. But if any considerable op- 
position existed in the country, enough of it would be re- 
flected in Congress to prevent agreement. "When all three 
did not agree, there was to be no method legally provided 
for putting pressure upon the dissenters. AVhether Presi- 



THE CONSTITUTION 179 

deut or Senate opposed, the- highest duty of that branch 
to the people consisted in maintaining its firm front until 
a new election could be held and the people could once more 
indicate their desires. In four years at the most, the Presi- 
dent and Senate could be brought into agreement with the 
House of Representatives, and if the people were decided 
enough in their opinion to maintain it for four years, nothing 
further could or ought to be done to prevent them from 
having their way. To the end that this arrangement should 
not cripple the efficiency of the Federal government, how- 
ever, the executive power was placed unreservedly in the 
President's hands: the existing law should be enforced 
promptly and efficiently in any case ; new laws should be 
enacted, new policies adopted, only after due deliberation. 
The routine administration was made easy; the adoption of 
new legislation was consciously made as difficult as possible. 
After four months of anxious debate, from IMay to Sep- 
tember 1787, the Convention submitted its work to the coun- 
tr\^, requesting that the document should be ratified by con- 
ventions or by popular vote in each State, and that when 
nine States had accepted it, it should go into operation as 
binding upon those who ratified it. A long and bitter cam- 
paign was fought in State after State. The old "Patriot 
party" of 1775 led by Samuel Adams, Patrick Henry, Me- 
lancthon Smith of New York, and George Mason of Virginia 
felt that the Constitution sacrificed all that the Revolution 
had been fought to win.^^ "Who authorized them to speak 
the language of We the People, instead of We the States?" 
cried Henry.^- *'I stumble at the threshold," declared Sam- 
uel Adams, **I meet with a national government instead of 
a federal union of sovereign States. ' ' ^^ The very strong 

11 Tlie Constitution was the "triumph of the legitimate successors of 
the Anti-Revolutionary party of 1775." Judge Chamberlain in Papers 
of the American Historical Association, III, No. 1. 

12 Speech in the Virginia Convention. Elliott, Debates, III, 22, 29, 
44, 521-522. "Even from that illustrious man who saved us by his 
valor, I would have a reason for his conduct." 

13 Samuel Adams to R. H. Lee. Lee's Life of R. H. Lee, II, 130. 



180 THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 

objection was also raised that the Convention had exceeded 
its authority. It had been directed to amend the Articles of 
Confederation and had proposed a wholly new scheme of 
government. Nor were men slow to remark that 73 members 
had been elected, of whom nearly a third never attended 
and of whom scarcely more than half (39) signed the final 
document. The boasted unanimity was absent. Detailed ob- 
jections of all kinds appeared. In Massachusetts, New York, 
and Virginia the fight was particularly fierce. A series of 
essays called the Federalist written by Hamilton, Madison, 
and Jay, published in New York but widely read throughout 
the country, were instrumental in convincing the people of 
the expediency of the new constitution, which was finally 
adopted by eleven States in the fall of 1788. 

The first elections, held in January 1789, caused a succession 
of disagreements in various States, which for a time threat- 
ened to prevent the choice of a Congress or of presidential 
electors in time to meet on March 4, the date when the old 
Congress of the Confederation was formally to dissolve. The 
presidential electors, however, finally did meet; the news 
quickly spread that George Washington and John Adams 
had been elected President and Vice-President respectively; 
but when March 4 dawned, there was no President-elect in 
New York to be inaugurated, because the votes had not been 
officially counted and the President not yet officially elected. 
Furthermore, there were not enough members of either the 
House or the Senate in the city to form a quorum to count 
the votes; the Assembly Hall was still in the carpenters' 
hands; and Washington and Adams both declined to leave 
home until they should be officially assured of their election. 
It is most difficult for us to understand to-day the anxiety 
and suspense of those weeks in March and April 1789, when, 
with the old government legally dead, it was as yet more 
than doubtful whether the new could be even formally put in 
power. After weeks of alarm and speculation, a bare quorum 
in both houses of Congress finally assembled on April 6, 
more than a month after the date set for the inauguration 



THE CONSTITUTION 181 

of the new President; the votes were counted; and a fort- 
night later, on April 30, Washington was inaugurated. Few 
people remember now that in 1789 it was doubtful for 
nearly two months whether men could be got together to fill 
enough of the formal posts created by the new Constitution 
to make it possible to begin the task of creating a new ad- 
ministration. As the Anti-Federalists derisively declared, the 
"old man" (Franklin) and "the two boys" (Madison and 
Hamilton) were all wrong: the old roof had leaked but the 
new one was not even on the building. "If the system can 
be put in operation without touching much the pockets of 
the people," wrote Washington to Jefferson, "perhaps it 
may be done; but, in my judgment, infinite circumspection 
and prudence are yet necessary in the experiment. ' ' ^* 

Fisher Ames has left us a touching picture of Washington 
at this time. Just after the inauguration, "I was present 
in the pew (at church) with the President and must assure 
you that, after making all deductions for the delusion of 
one's fancy in regard to characters, I still think of him with 
more veneration than for any other person. Time has made 
havoc upon his face. That and other circumstances not to be 
reasoned about, conspire to keep up the awe which I brought 
with me. He addressed the two Houses in the Senate Cham- 
ber; it was a very touching scene and quite of a solemn 
kind. His aspect grave almost to sadness; his modesty, ac- 
tually shaking; his voice deep, a little tremulous, and so low 
as to call for close attention; added to the series of objects 
presented to the mind and overwhelming it, produced emo- 
tions of the most affecting kind upon the members." In 
the inaugural address Washington had said: "The preser- 
vation of the sacred fire of liberty, and the destiny of the 
republican model of government, are justly considered as 
deeply, perhaps as finally, staked on the experiment in- 
trusted to the hands of the American people." Such were 
the hopes and aspirations, such the sense of responsibility, 
with which the fathers began work under the Constitution. 

1* Washington to Jefferson, August 31, 1788. Writings of Washing- 
ton. Sparks, IX, 426-7. 



XIV 

THE ESTABLISHMENT OF PEEMANENT ADMINIS- 
TRATION 

Were it not for our after-knowledge and the realization that 
the difficulties to be remedied were for the most part super- 
ficial and curable, the immediate success of the new govern- 
ment would be as astonishing to us as it was gratifying to 
its contemporaries. But the Constitution was not, as the 
vast majority assumed, the cause. The secret lay in the 
changed economic conditions, in the disappearance of the com- 
mercial stringency by the operation of economic factors on 
which governments and constitutions had no influence. Of 
this Washington was well aware. *'It was indeed next to a 
miracle," he wrote in 1790, ''that there should have been 
so much unanimity in points of such importance among such 
a number of citizens, so widely scattered, and so different 
in their habits in many respects, as the Americans were. Nor 
are the growing unanimity and increasing good-will of the 
citizens to the government less remarkable than favorable 
circumstances. . . . Perhaps a number of accidental circiun- 
stances have concurred with the real effects of the government 
to make the people uncommonly well pleased with their situ- 
ation and prospects."^ 

Chief among these, he placed the natural reaction from a 
long period of business depression and confusion, and the 
result of the frugality and economy which hard times inevi- 
tably inculcate. "I expect that many blessings will be at- 
tributed to our new government which are now taking their 
rise from the industry and frugality into the practice of 
which the people have been forced from necessity. I really 

1 Writings of Washington, Ford's ed., XI, 459. 

182 



ESTABLISHMENT OF PERMANENT ADMINISTRATION 183 

believe that there never was so much labor and economy to 
be found before in the country as at the present moment. . . . 
All these blessings (for all these blessings will come) will be 
referred to the fostering influence of the new government. 
Whereas many causes will have conspired to produce them. ' ' ^ 
Among the ''many causes" clearly belongs the very great 
development of the country during the previous generation, 
— the doubling of the population, the vast increase in the 
number of acres under cultivation, in the number of ships 
being built, in the volume of produce seeking a market. A 
French traveler declared that "on the whole, it is difficult 
to conceive the state of increase and the prosperity of this 
country after so long and calamitous a war." Then, at the 
very moment when America had more to sell than ever be- 
fore, a new market for grain, naval stores, and all sorts of 
staple crops was opened in Europe by the outbreak of the 
French Revolution and the resulting wars. For the first 
time in history, the Atlantic coast was able to export directly 
to Europe on advantageous terms. Moreover, tJie gener- 
ality of the European war after 1793 deprived most of the 
continental shipping of its neutral status, exposed it to 
capture and the cargoes to confiscation, and thus left the 
American merchant marine the only considerable neutral fleet 
on the ocean. The really extraordinary impulse to trade and 
navigation from these sources did not manifest itself clearly 
in 1789, but followed closely enough upon the inauguration 
of the new government to cause the people, as Washington 
had predicted, to ascribe the resulting prosperity to its oper- 
ations. Economic forces thus gave the new government time 
to formulate its plans and to establish the administration on 
a permanent basis without being so much hampered by the 
exaggerated expectations of the people and the demand for 
immediate results as Washington and Hamilton had antici- 
pated would be the case. Moreover, as Hamilton very 
clearly saw, the great development during and since the Revo- 
lution proved the country unquestionably solvent and un- 

2 Writings of Washington, Ford's ed., XI, 279. 



184 THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 

doubtedly very prosperous. It demonstrated conclusively 
that the evils were more apparent than real, superficial rather 
than fundamental, and of a nature which administrative 
regulations could easily obviate, if only public confidence 
could be long enough secured to give them the thorough, 
honest trial which would be indispensable to final success. 
If his plans for the opening of trade channels, for the pro- 
vision of a medium of exchange, and for the funding of the 
debt could be actually accepted, and better foreign relations 
could be established by diplomacy, the moneyed and prop- 
ertied class would be firmly bound to the new government 
by the solid chain of interest and the stability of the new 
regime therefore assured. While the immediate success of 
the new administration was clearly due to fortuitous eco- 
nomic factors, which could neither have been foreseen nor 
controlled, its permanent success was due to the measures of 
Alexander Hamilton. 

The first session of Congress was mainly occupied with 
the establishment of the skeleton of a central administration, 
— the creation of four departments, state, treasury, war, and 
judiciary; and with such questions as salaries, territorial 
government, Indians, post-offices, federal courts. The second 
session, in 1790, was devoted to the discussion and adoption 
of Hamilton's great measures for the permanent solution of 
those vital problems which had caused the adoption of the 
Constitution. Of these unquestionably the most important 
was the refunding of the entire debt of the Revolutionary 
governments, state and central. Hamilton declared in favor 
of paying the entire indebtedness of every sort and variety 
at par: the certificates constituted a valid legal claim on 
the new government for the sums mentioned in them; if 
they were not valid for the whole sum, he did not believe 
them legally valid at all. It was imperative to establish the 
credit of the new government at once and enable it to borrow 
money to meet the probable crises of the future. It was 
no less imperative to tie to the government the moneyed 
men and the creditor class by giving them a personal in- 



ESTABLISKMENT OF PERMANENT ADMINISTRATION 185 

terest in its continuance and in the future of the Federalist 
party. Refunding had a political as well as a financial 
purpose. Hamilton's study of English politics had convinced 
him that the men of property exerted more political influ- 
ence than any other class and that the union of financial 
and commercial interests in the new Federalist party would 
go far to produce that consensus of opinion and union of 
political sentiment which the new government so obviously 
needed. If the citizens who held the debts of the govern- 
ment were promised payment at par of debts which they had 
expected would never be paid at all, there would be little 
doubt of the ability of the new government to maintain 
itself. 

To the objections of the Anti-Federalists and opponents 
of assumption, Hamilton returned convincing answers. Al- 
though the debt looked large, it was not too large to be 
paid. Nor was its history to be taken into account; it was 
a legal obligation and should be treated accordingly. Any 
attempt to compromise by payment on the basis of a scale 
graduated to the previous market values of the securities 
would be fatal to the prime object the refunding was meant 
to accomplish, — the establishment of the government's credit 
both at home and abroad. To many this attitude seemed 
foolhardy and unnecessary. Was it not commonly acknowl- 
edged that the bonds and certificates had depreciated in value 
to almost nothing, and had often been originally issued at 
a rate far below par? The government would thus pay 
even more than the original holder had loaned. Was it not 
even truer that all the certificates had changed hands, so that 
the original holder would not get the profit Hamilton pro- 
posed to allow, while a man not at all entitled to the gratitude 
of America would calmly pocket the difference between the 
small sum he had paid and the value of the certificates at 
par? This argument was strengthened by the knowledge 
that speculators had been busy for some months buying up 
certificates in the country districts, imposing on the igno- 
rance and credulity of such original holders as still retained 



186 THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 

their evidences of indebtedness. The trade in securities in 
the larger cities was brisk and prices went up and down 
with rapidity according to the news from Congress. Hamil- 
ton was rewarding speculation and encouraging gambling, 
vociferated his opponents. 

The really bitter debates took place over the assumption 
of the States' debts. Would the country be able to bear 
the ruinous taxation which would be necessary to pay the 
interest? "Was account to be taken of what had already 
been paid by the States? Some had paid much; others had 
paid a little; most had paid nothing. Were the honest then 
to be taxed for the payment of all the debts of the dishonest, 
when the share paid by the latter of the honest States' debts 
would be proportionately smaller? Again, was it wise to as- 
sume a burden whose size no one knew? There were indeed 
no reliable figures to show what the outstanding indebtedness 
of the States was and it seemed almost impossible to draw a 
wholly accurate line between the revolutionary and pre- 
revolutionary debts. Several States were heavily involved 
as a result of paper-money crazes and land-bank schemes dur- 
ing the colonial period, and these debts the other States were 
vehemently opposed to assuming. The debates were acrimo- 
nious in the extreme : taunts over the relative suffering during 
the war; threats of secession if the debt was not assumed, 
threats to leave the union if it was, were hurled back and 
forth with vehemence. A bargain was finally struck at a 
little dinner-party given by Jefferson whereby the capitol was 
located at Washington as the Anti-Federalist forces and the 
Southern States wished and the debt was assumed as the Fed- 
eralists and the Northern States desired. 

The debt of the United States totaled, with the arrears of 
interest, about fifty-four millions of dollars. Of this, about 
twelve millions, principal and interest, was owed abroad and 
was paid at once in full by the proceeds of a new loan. The 
domestic debt of forty-two millions was to be funded by the 
exchange of the old certificates at face value for the new 
bonds at par. No one was to be compelled to make the ex- 



ESTABLISHMENT OF PERMANENT ADMINISTRATION 187 

change, but Hamilton believed the terms at which the new 
bonds were offered were sufficiently advantageous to result 
in the voluntary exchange of the bulk of the debt, and that 
the government would be able to buy up the rest in the 
market. Each creditor received a certificate equal to two- 
thirds of his indebtedness which bore interest at six per cent 
at once, and a certificate for the remaining third bearing in- 
terest at six per cent after 1800. The device reduced the 
interest paid on the whole debt to four per cent, but con- 
cealed the fact from the public. New bonds to the extent of 
twenty-one and one-half millions were to be exchanged for 
the States' indebtedness at par, but only about eighteen mil- 
lions were ever applied for. To these creditors were given 
three certificates, one calling for interest at six per cent at 
once, and one for interest at three per cent at once, and a 
third for interest at six per cent after 1800. By these de- 
vices the total debt was refunded, paid off, or bought up, and 
the annual interest charge reduced from nearly five millions 
to something over two. The national revenue and the west- 
em lands were pledged for payment of principal and in- 
terest. 

The refunding was a gi^eat success. Within three years, the 
bulk of the domestic debt had been converted; the interest 
payments which had seemed so huge in 1790 were easily met 
by the revenue from the customs; and the government was 
even able to show a small surplus six years out of the first 
ten, with one year in which expenses and receipts exactly bal- 
anced. Unquestionably, the Federal government was solvent 
and its credit has never since been questioned. By 1835, 
the whole national debt had been paid off. And all had been 
accomplished smoothly, quietly, and with practically no ob- 
jection on the part of the people. The necessity of not 
burdening the people with taxes at the first was clearly ap- 
preciated by Washington and Hamilton. During the colonial 
period and the Eevolution, the people had paid few or no 
taxes except to their own local town or county government ; 
the State governments had needed little money. Hamilton 



188 THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 

insisted that the people must never see a United States tax- 
collector; that they must pay indirectly by customs and ex- 
cise, and would then never realize what the amount was. 
This tradition has been on the whole followed ever since with 
unquestioned success. 

The army was paid off in full either in money, in bonds, 
or in grants of. western land. Measures for the complete ful- 
filment of the terms of the Treaty of Peace were undertaken. 
A national revenue was at once created by the imposition of a 
tariff on imports. The adoption of the Constitution and the 
establishment of the new administration had abolished at once 
the State tariffs on exports and imports, had made discrimi- 
nating duties favorable or hostile to any locality impossible, 
had given all the free use of the rivers and roads, and had 
assured the citizens of every State the same civil and com- 
mercial privileges in every State as in their own. This free- 
dom of intercourse and the abolition of restrictions went far 
to remove the artificial obstacles in the way of the growth of 
trade and of the complete rehabilitation of the credit of State 
and Federal government. 

Some paper or token money had yet to be made, which 
would pass currently in America but not in Europe, possess 
a standard value, and be kept in circulation. A sufficiently 
large amount in notes must be issued to furnish the neces- 
sary medium for private and government business, without 
running the risk of depreciation on the one hand because of 
the size of the issue, or of the undue scarcity on the other 
hand which would be certain to result, if the merchants or 
the government held any considerable quantity of it for even 
a few weeks. As at the present day, money ''flowed" from 
the coast cities to the interior to move the crops and usually 
came back again in exchange for manufactured goods, leav- 
ing the inland districts pretty well denuded of currency for 
local business or for government taxes until the next year. 
Nor must the government collect the money in payment of 
taxes and custom-dues unless it could immediately return 
it to circulation. 



ESTABLISHMENT OF PERMANENT ADMINISTRATION 189 

Hamilton 's solution was the first Bank of the United States, 
chartered finally by Congress after a bitter fight over the con- 
stitutionality of the measure, with a capital of ten millions, 
and a monopoly for twenty years. A mint was established at 
the same time to standardize the coinage and emit such specie 
as could be obtained, but the real currency was to be the notes 
of the Bank, which the latter was to be allowed to issue to an 
amount not exceeding its capital, and which were to be legal 
tender for most debts due the government and for all private 
business. Branches were to be established in convenient 
cities to enable the Bank to become the government agent in 
different parts of the country. The stock was subscribed in a 
hurry and was at once regarded as a good investment. Ac- 
cording to the provisions of the law, one-fifth of the capital 
stock, two millions, was subscribed by the government in its 
own six per cent bonds ; one-fifth, two millions, was paid in by 
the public in specie ; and the remaining six millions by the 
public in United States six per cent bonds. The public and 
the government, of course, hoped that the dividends on the 
stock would exceed the six per cent interest which the Bank 
itself got from the government bonds it received in exchange 
for stock ; the Bank expected by the loan of the two millions 
in specie plus the six per cent interest on the eight millions 
of bonds to make a good profit and to be enabled to declare 
dividends. Such indeed was the result. The public duly 
paid in the two millions in specie, which became of course an 
asset of the Bank. The latter promptly loaned the money to 
the government at a fair interest and the government too 
had an ample account from which to meet its first bills. The 
government then deposited the two millions with the Bank as 
the government's agent and the Bank also had the specie to 
use. The Bank then loaned it out to the public, who returned 
it to the Bank with interest or paid it to the government for 
taxes. Of course, most of the specie never left the Bank's 
vaults, and the transactions were really performed by means 
of notes, checks, or entries on the books of the Bank, but 
the knowledge that the specie was there gave the note issue 



190 THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 

stability and this careful utilization of the same small stock 
of specie by the government, the Bank, and the public, kept 
it in constant circulation, prevented hoarding, and thus en- 
abled it to meet the country's needs. The existence of the 
branches and the fact that the Bank was the government's 
agent, permitted the transaction of the business of the distant 
sections of the country without the actual transfer of specie 
and notes from one locality to another and thus left most parts 
of the country constantly supplied with an adequate amount 
of currency. By means of the Bank, the government had 
induced the public to finance the central government during 
the first years when it must otherwise have borrowed di- 
rectly sufficient money to meet its pressing needs. The suc- 
cess of the expedient made money for the Bank, the govern- 
ment, and the public, and allowed the government to control 
the currency and prevent stringency or depreciation far bet- 
ter than it could have through the Treasury itself. 

One thing more remained to be accomplished before the 
permanent success of the central government could be as- 
sured, — the vast majority of the people must be brought to 
believe in its expediency and desirability. Washington had 
fought the Revolution; Franldin had financed it; Madison 
and Wilson had framed the Constitution ; Hamilton had put it 
into operation. It remained for Thomas Jefferson to con- 
vince the great majority of the people of its excellence and to 
reconcile them to the existence of a central government which 
was something more than a name. 

The Constitution, as John Quincy Adams later truthfully 
said, had been "extorted by grinding necessity from a re- 
luctant people." Nothing short of the vivid fear of anarchy 
and a possible resort to kingship reconciled many of the 
leaders to the new government, and it may be safely claimed 
that the people as a whole understood the subtle legal and 
constitutional points involved as little as they usually have 
comprehended similar facts at other epochs of history. After 
we strip away from the Revolution the preconception built 
around it by the struggles of the Civil War, we begin to 



ESTABLISHMENT OF PERMANENT ADMINISTRATION 191 

realize that it was an anti-national movement, in the sense 
in which we now use those words. It was a solid protest by 
thirteen States against the encroachment of England upon 
their individual sovereignty. It was fought to prevent the 
institution of a central administration; its success caused the 
institution of the league of amity between the several States 
known as the Confederation, whose chief point was the in- 
alienable and imperishable sovereignty of each State. "With 
the Constitution, on the other hand, the people had adopted 
nationalism as we now conceive of it, the principle of 9. union 
between individuals, which made the people as a nation su- 
perior to all the States and the central government superior 
to any State in its obligation upon the individual. AVe have 
too long discussed sovereignty and States' rights with rela- 
tion to a definite document and have laid too little stress upon 
the fact that the full-blown doctrine of States' rights is anti- 
national, because it denies the existence, the desirability, and 
the expediency of a truly national government.^ If there was 
no nation in existence in 1776 and in 1783, if the people were 
unswervingly loyal to the old colonial notion of States' sov- 
ereignty until the eve of the adoption of the Constitution, 
it will be apparent that the adoption of that document did 
not disabuse them at once of the notions they had so long 
cherished nor by some occult operation deprive them of their 
preference for local authority. Whatever the legal effect of 
the preamble of the Constitution was, whatever the leaders 
of both Federalist and Anti-Federalist parties conceded it 
to be, the people as a whole little appreciated the full signifi- 
cance of its adoption and assumed that they had done little 

3 "I am sure," said Patrick Henry, opposing the Constitution in the 
Virginia Convention, "they [the framers] were fully impressed with 
the necessity of forming a great consolidated government, instead of a 
confederation. That this [the Constitution! is a consolidated govern- 
ment is demonstrably clear; and the danger of such a government is, 
to my mind, very striking. . . . States are the characteristics and the 
Boul of a confederation. If the States be not the agents of this com- 
pact, it must be one great, consolidated, national government, of the 
people of all the States." Elliott's Debates, III, 21, 22. As a national 
government, Henry opposed it. 



192 THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 

more than remodel the old Congress and permit it to regulate 
trade, impose taxes, and pay off the debt. 

Miracles had been promised and expected; on the whole 
miracles happened ; but the most marvelous of things become 
dulled after a thorough acquaintance. Soon the vast majority 
forgot how much the new Federal government had accom- 
plished, began to clamor for what it could not do, and became 
dissatisfied. From the Revolution the majority had inherited 
a hatred of England and an admiration for France, which 
was much heightened by the outbreak in the latter country of 
the Revolution and by the proclamation of democratic ideas, 
which the Americans readily assumed were identical with 
their own. Because the English promptly disavowed the 
principles of the French Revolution, and because the Federal- 
ists wished to wait for the institution of firm government in 
France before recognizing the new Republic, the Anti-Federal- 
ists concluded that the administration was English, "monarch- 
ical," and dominated by "a corrupt Treasury Squadron." 

The attempt to live under the new Constitution had revealed 
the need of definition, and the discretion and latitude of in- 
terpretation allowed Congress and the President alarmed the 
Anti-Federalists ; the excise and other new taxes they thought 
obnoxious ; the prompt suppression of the Whisky Rebellion in 
western Pennsylvania augured a strength in the new govern- 
ment dangerous to the sovereignty of the individual States. 
Jay's proposed treaty with England in 1794 furnished the 
occasion for the outbreak of as virulent an attack upon the 
administration and its motives as has been seen in this country. 
All things considered, the terms he secured from England 
were favorable ; they were, however, so far below the expecta- 
tions of the people that the outcry was immediate : the Feder- 
alists had sacrificed America to the British interest. In fact, 
the prompt success of the Federalist measures plus the unex- 
pected changes in the economic situation had suddenly re- 
moved the ' ' grinding necessity ' ' which had extorted the Con- 
stitution from the reluctant majority.* The panic was over 

4"Tlie great number of new and elegant buildings which have been 



ESTABLISHMENT OF PERMANENT ADMINISTRATION 193 

and the more timid as well as the more venturesome began 
to wonder whether things had not gone far enough. 

The Anti-English, Anti-Federalist, anti-centralization move- 
ment found its leader in Thomas Jefferson, who really repre- 
sented the majority whom Hamilton was seeking to rule. Has 
early experience in "Virginian politics and long residence on 
the frontier had brought him into contact with the sort of 
citizens who formed the majority in America; his long resi- 
dence in France as ambassador had familiarized him with 
Rousseau's ideas of theoretical democracy and with their en- 
thusiastic reception abroad. Soon after his return to America 
and his entrance into the Cabinet, he became acutely conscious 
of the antagonism between his notions of right and expediency 
and those of "Washington and Hamilton, and, as well, ap- 
preciated the all-important fact that the latter were at 
variance with the majority of the people. He soon resigned 
from the Cabinet and went into open opposition. He sensed 
his own agreement with the people and began consciously to 
organize the Anti-Federalists and to prepare the way for the 
overthrow of the Federalists at the coming presidential elec- 
tions. Through newspapers which he subsidized, through 
public meetings, private letters, and all other available 
methods, he carried on a systematic campaign to discredit the 
Federalist leaders and their policies in the eyes of the people. 
The arrival of the envoy of the new French Republic, Citizen 
Genet, gave Jefferson an admirable opportunity, and he con- 
trived to raise a good many other issues which put the Federal- 
erected in this To\vn [Boston], within the last ten years, strike the eye 
with astonishment, and prove the rapid manner in which these people 
have been acquiring wealth. The revolutionary situation of Europe, 
has made them the most exclusive [extensive] Carriers of the Powers 
at War with Great Britain — their extensive Fisheries and Lumber 
Trade, with a great surplus of Provisions and other staple commodities 
for exportation, which they have been permitted, almost without re- 
straint, to carry to Great Britain and her Islands, have filled them 
with that Wealth the operative effects of which are so visible in every 
direction, that they cannot fail to strike the eye of even a superficial 
observer." John Howe to Provost, May 5, 1808. American Historical 
Review, XVII, 78-9. Howe was sent by the Lieutenant Governor of 
Halifax to view and describe conditions in the United States. 



194 THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 

ist administration apparently in the wrong and so rendered it 
unpopular. 

Even had the Federalists been supported at the first 
by a clear majority of the people, and even if their 
majority in the first Congresses and their victory in the first 
presidential elections had not been partially due to a 
disposition to give the men who had secured the adoption of 
the Constitution a fair chance to put it into operation, Jef- 
ferson would have had little difficulty in defeating them 
eventually, because they soon disagreed with each other over 
vital policies. Hamilton, with all his brilliance and ability, 
had not the tact needed to handle men who disagreed with 
him; the difficulties were enhanced by the attitude of Jef- 
ferson and his subsidized press; and Hamilton was compelled 
to resign from the Cabinet and direct the government's busi- 
ness from outside. While Washington remained President, 
this was not difficult, but the inauguration of Adams at once 
made trouble, for Adams personally distrusted Hamilton and 
was angry at finding his own Cabinet officers seeking counsel 
from Hamilton which he felt they should have asked of him. 
The rift in the Federalist party grew greater and greater ; the 
rivalry for the leadership of its parts began to be keen; Jef- 
ferson had now perfected his organization and drew first the 
people and then the leaders over to his side. 

The presidential election of 1800 was even unnecessarily de- 
cisive : the Federalist support simply disappeared. John 
Adams in a rage appointed as many officers as he could be- 
fore the third of March 1801, made John Marshall Chief 
Justice of the Supreme Court, and left Washington in high 
dudgeon. From the victory flowed surprising results, but 
none more astonishing than the complacency with which the 
Anti-Federalists began to employ the powers which they had 
so often denounced. Once in. office, they found that the Con- 
stitution could be as easily interpreted to perform what they 
thought right as it could to do what they thought wrong. 
Jefferson, too, furnished a rule of interpretation which gave 
general satisfaction, though its illustrious framer did not in- 



ESTABLISHMENT OF PERM.VXENT ADMINISTRATION 195 

variably observe it. The Federal government should be **the 
American department of foreign affairs"; the strictest pos- 
sible construction should be placed upon the broad phrases of 
the Constitution; the Federal government should do only 
what was absolutely necessary, never what seemed merely de- 
sirable; all else should be left to the States. On the whole, 
declared Jefferson, the less government the better. With the 
Constitution, thus interpreted, the vast majority were thor- 
oughly well suited, and in general the talk about the wicked- 
ness and undesirability of central government disappeared. 
Jefferson had performed the very great service of reconciling 
the people to their own Constitution, of fostering that gen- 
eral consensus of opinion that the central government was a 
good thing and that its form and policy were about right, 
without which in the long run no government can exist. He 
did it by interpreting the document in the light of the peo- 
ple's ideas instead of by the notions of its framers. 



XV 

THE WAR OF 1812 

One great difficulty we meet in studying the long period be- 
between the adoption of the Constitution and the outbreak of 
the Civil War in 1861 lies in the necessity of remembering 
that the colonial issues were not completely settled in 1789 
and did not then give way to entirely new issues around which 
subsequent events group themselves. The unity of American 
history is found rather in the identity of issues throughout 
our growth and development. The Revolution, the Constitu- 
tion, and the victory of the Anti-Federalists had not definitely 
settled anything more than the two cardinal but none the less 
elementary facts, that England was not to interfere with our 
internal relations, and that a central government of some 
strength ought to be maintained. Still pressing for solution 
were the really fundamental difficulties, — our commercial re- 
lations with European nations and with their colonies, an 
economic difficulty of the first magnitude which the Revolu- 
tion had only intensified; the relations of the States to each 
other and to the central government, the national issue ; the 
powers of the central government, what sort of a central gov- 
ernment did we want, the constitutional issue. 

The Revolution had declared us politically independent of 
Europe, and the men of 1776 had apparently supposed that 
the winning of the war would free us from all the disagree- 
able commercial chains which bound us so closely to England 
and to her West India colonies. The Confederation had been 
the anti-national solution of the relations of the States to 
each other and had been put into effect by the radical party 
which had won the Revolution. Out of the economic crisis 
and the failure of the radicals to cope with it had grown the 

196 



THE WAR OF 1812 197 

union of the conservative and propertied elements which had 
made possible the formulation and adoption in the Consti- 
tution of a distinctly national solution of the struggle between 
the States. Yet it was apparent, before the Constitution was 
adopted, that the national solution by no means satisfied every 
one and was eminently distasteful to a majority which grew 
in size and vehemence every year. The War of 1812 was the 
culmination of a period of unrest and dissatisfaction which 
had its real beginnings in the Anti-Federalist approval of the 
Whisky Rebellion and their opposition to the Jay Treaty. It 
was, like the Revolution, a struggle between forces in America 
as well as a war between England and America. Its causes 
were the same fundamental difficulties which had led to the 
Revolution and which were to lead to civil war in 1861 : on 
the one hand, the economic dependence of this country on 
Europe, and, on the other, the fact that the States in America 
were neither one nation nor different nations, had neither the 
same interest nor different interests, were not independent 
but interdependent. 

To the apparent surprise of the Americans, the Treaty of 
1783 excluded them promptly from the English West India 
Islands and from the Newfoundland fisheries and gave them 
the status of foreigners, with absolutely no rights at all under 
English legislation and no privileges whatever under any 
other nation's regulations. Temporary arrangements, highly 
unsatisfactory to American jnerchants, had been made before 
1789 with several countries, but the Federalist administra- 
tion had quickly seen that better terms were essential and 
had sent Jay to England to negotiate a treaty. After weary 
mouths of argument, he was able to secure some agreement in 
regard to the evacuation of the western lands and other mat- 
ters not regarded in America as imperative, but upon the vital 
matter of commercial relations and respect for our shipping 
on the high seas, so little was conceded that the Senate in high 
indignation rejected that clause of the treaty altogether. At 
the same time, considering the almost universal American 
hostility towards England, our failure to fulfil our earlier 



198 THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 

treaty obligations, the very general laudation of the French 
Revolution and of what the English deemed anarchistic senti- 
ments, England was hardly to be blamed for displaying some 
reluctance at making substantial and valuable concessions 
which we were scarcely in a position to requite, and which 
really amounted to nothing less than the voluntary restora- 
tion on England's part of that complete freedom of inter- 
course which the States had long enjoyed as colonies and had 
so lately rejected with contumely as something quite worth- 
less. Were the English then to forget that the Revolution had 
happened, to swallow our affronts and insults without resent- 
ment? 

Moreover, the Jay Treaty episode was scarcely begun be- 
fore circumstances had entirely altered the situation and every 
year made more inexpedient the resumption by England of 
the earlier status quo, even had pride and a natural resent- 
ment against disloyal subjects not continued to influence the 
English decisions. By 1800 the new facts were appallingly 
clear. Since the outbreak of the French Revolution and more 
especially since the beginning of the general European war in 
1793, a market for American staple products had appeared in 
Europe, and a demand for neutral ships to handle the carry- 
ing trade. Both had redounded to the benefit of the United 
States, had caused our export trade to revive, had furnished 
us with the much needed medium of exchange with Europe, 
and had given an impetus to the growth of our merchant 
marine which made it a factor on the sea to be reckoned with. 
While the statistics are not perhaps very reliable, it seems 
reasonably clear that within a decade after 1792 the tonnage 
of American shipping increased five hundred per cent, from 
two hundred thousand tons to one million tons. England 
awoke to the existence of a new commercial rival whose oper- 
ations threatened to interfere more and more every year with 
her monopoly of the carrying trade. Nor was it unnatural 
for her to conclude that we were allies of France and there- 
fore pledged to her own destruction. We were making our 
chief profit out of supplying her enemies with food and out 



THE WAR OF 1812 199 

of carrying their trade in our neutral vessels from one point 
to another under the very noses of her cruisers. Fuel was of 
course added to the flames by the discovery that the old plan 
to annex Canada, which had been so prominent among the 
early movements of the Revolution/ was still alive and was 
received with great favor in the West and North. In 1789 and 
in 180-i something more than talk was on foot, though it was 
not and is not clear how far the matter went.^ Should the 
English also supinely surrender Canada? 

Accordingly, the English proceeded to treat us as they had 
treated other commercial rivals and fought us with the self- 
same weapons which had been so efficacious against the 
French, Dutch, and Spanish. They proclaimed at once the 
right to search all vessels on the high seas for contraband 
goods and refused as before to accept the doctrine that neutral 
ships make neutral goods. Everything going to France was 
contraband. In the West Indies and off Newfoundland the 
British cruisers did their best to enforce strictly the now 
doubly obnoxious provision of the old Navigation Acts and 
W'ere more successful than ever before. The treatment ac- 
corded American vessels in English ports and American 

1 Tlie attempts to obtain Canada during the Revolution are con- 
veniently summarized by J. H. Smith in Our Struggle for the Four- 
teenth Colony, New York, 1907. Franklin's letters and the Journal of 
the Continental Congress contain pregnant and interesting information. 

2 Interesting material on the situation just previous to the War of 
1812 is to be found in the secret reports of John Howe, an Englishman 
sent to the United States in 1808 to report upon conditions, popular 
and official opinions and intentions, to the Lieutenant Governor -of 
Halifax, Sir George Provost. He made a very careful and thorough 
investigation and reported very fully upon what he saw and heard. 
"But, they say, we can take the British Provinces of Canada, Nova 
Scotia, and New Brunswick; . . . all the Military preparations in this 
Country can only have references to the British Colonies. ... It is 
amusing to hear them talk here of the extreme facility with which they 
can possess themselves of the British Provinces." Howe to Provost, 
from Washington, Nov. 27, 1808. "The Conquest of Canada they con- 
template as a matter perfectly easy; and whenever they speak of it 
tbey build much on the disposition of the Canadians as friendly to 
them. . . . Men of all parties think if a War should ensue that the 
Conquest of these Colonies is certain." Howe to Provost, May 19, 1809. 
American Historical Review, XVII, 342-3; 354. 



200 THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 

sailors from the confiscated ships was captious and offensive. 
In the Mississippi Valley, the English still held important 
posts and incited revolts among the Indians. 

But most obnoxious of all from the American point of view- 
was the so-called "right" to arrest English deserters wherever 
they could be found and the defense of the operations of the 
press-gang. The English notion had always been that a man 
born in England would always be an English subject; they 
had always declined to recognize any oaths or acts of his as 
a valid release from his responsibility to England. To prove 
a man of English birth or to have been an English citizen was 
to prove he was still one. This notion of indefeasible al- 
legiance therefore denied the right of an Englishman to take 
an oath of allegiance to the United States which would consti- 
tute a valid severance of his connections with England ; it was 
tantamount to a refusal to recognize the citizenship of a very 
large number of Americans in 1800, who had no intention 
whatever of returning to England and felt nothing but hatred 
for that country. Here was of course a subject on which com- 
promise was hardly possible : the right of the United States to 
protect its citizens was clearly infringed by the refusal of 
England to admit that large numbers of Americans were 
citizens of the United States at all. 

The necessity for action on the part of the United States 
was particularly clear because of the operations of the Eng- 
lish press-gang. The British navy was chiefly manned by 
conscripts and by men forced into the service by questionable 
methods. The press-gang from a battleship would go ashore 
in any town it happened to be near, whether in England or 
elsewhere, and seize by main force the sturdy-looking men 
it met, carry them off to the ship, and compel them to serve 
as sailors. Poor pay, bad food, strict discipline, degrading 
punishment, as well as the prospect of being killed in battle, 
made the service highly distasteful to Englishmen and par- 
ticularly onerous to the unfortunates "pressed" into it. De- 
sertions were therefore common and it was certainly true that 
many an American merchant-ship was manned by British de- 



THE WAR OF 1812 201 

serters and that many and many an American citizen was a 
deserter from the English navy, who sought to save himself 
from the severe penalties for desertion by forswearing his al- 
legiance. To cope with the difficulty, the English cruisers 
landed a press-gang in the various ports they called at and 
seized on sight and without investigation every man they 
thought looked like an English sailor. They also stopped 
American merchantmen on the high seas or in American har- 
bors, lined up the crew, and selected those they thought were 
British deserters. Had they not also availed themselves of the 
opportunity to collect all likely-looking men without regard 
to their previous history or origin, the American case would 
still have been incontestable. There is no doubt that, by 1812, 
many men born in America, who had never set foot in Eng- 
land, had been thus forced into the British service. Had the 
English been willing to confine themselves to the merchant 
marine, the situation would not have become so intolerable. 
But the victories of Nelson made them even more arrogant 
than before and caused the detention of United States war- 
ships from which American citizens were taken and compelled 
to serve in the British navy.^ A clearer insult to this country 
could hardly be conceived than this refusal to recognize the 
citizenship of the men enlisted in its official navy under the 
United States flag. 

The growing tensity of English relations only made more 
apparent the divergence of opinion in the United States and 
stimulated the local discord which had for a time been ended 
by the success of the Federalist administrations. Scarcely 
had the loss of American privileges in the West India Is- 

3 "I am informed, by a gentleman on whose information I think I 
can rely," wrote Howe to Provost, "that when she [the famous frigate. 
Constitution,] was paid off here [at New York] and her men discharged, 
there was not twenty American sailors belonging to her, that her whole 
crew with the exception of a few other foreigners, was entirely com- 
posed of British seamen." June 7, 1808. American Historical Review, 
XVII, 86. Such information naturally encouraged the English govern- 
ment to continue the search. Nor were they displeased to learn from 
Howe that the majority of the people he met in New England admitted 
the justice of the English claims and acta. Ibid., 89. 



202 THE RISE OF THE AJVIERICAN PEOPLE 

lands and in the fisheries been apprehended than talk of dis- 
union and secession began in the Mississippi Valley. The 
people who had settled west of the mountains had come to 
realize that the Mississippi was the only possible outlet for 
their commerce and that the mouth of the river, and hence 
control of its navigation, was in the hands of Spain. They 
believed the Spanish anxious to close the river to American 
trade, and they so well appreciated the mutual advantages, 
both to the Spanish and to the Atlantic States, of the estab- 
lishment of intercourse between the Spanish West India colo- 
nies and the Atlantic coast, that they were afraid Congress 
would allow Spain to close the Mississippi in exchange for 
commercial privileges in the Spanish West Indies. As early 
as 1786 this notion was current in the West, and, after the 
new Constitution had vested in the central government power 
to regulate commerce and to deal with western lands, the 
malcontents in Kentucky and Tennessee became sure that 
such was the design.^ Negotiations were opened with the 
Spanish at New Orleans and at St. Louis,° and the Virginia 
and Kentucky Resolutions of 1798 were somehow connected 
with the agitation for secession.*' With this western senti- 
ment, the Southern States largely sympathized, and the Anti- 
Federalists all over the country were disposed to complain 
vigorously of English insolence and encroachment and to de- 
clare themselves in favor of no compromise and of an insist- 
ence upon demands to which England clearly would not 
accede. 

In New England, on the other hand, and in mercantile 
circles all along the Atlantic coast, there was a disposition 
to insist less and negotiate more. Some sort of agreement 
with England was far more essential to them and their busi- 

* Writings of Washington, Ford's ed., XI, 239; 240 note. Tyler's 
Life of Henry and Rowland's Life of Mason. 

5 The Missouri Historical Society, St. Louis, has a valuable collection 
of manuscript material on this subject. Houck's Missouri contains 
material from Spanish archives. 

6 Writings of Jefferson, Ford's ed., VII, 263, 281, 290 note. Jeffer- 
son's counsel against secession prevented further action. 



THE WAR OF 1812 203 

ness than it was to the interior and western districts, and 
they realized far more adequately the impossibility of dic- 
tating terms to England, and the very great difficulty under 
the circumstances of obtaining from her a working com- 
promise, that would give them a part of what they hoped ulti- 
mately to obtain. The mercantile community was therefore 
in favor of minimizing the disputes over the right of search 
and impressment, which militated against individuals rather 
than against the country as a whole and on which no com- 
promise was possible, in the hope of obtaining some rights of 
navigation which would certainly redound to the benefit of 
the vast majority of Americans. The loud talk of reprisal 
upon English ships, the insistence upon reparation for in- 
sult, the general hostile tone assumed toward England, the 
laudation of France and everything French, these the New 
Englanders well knew only made more and more difficult the 
arrival at any agreement.^ Even after the overt outrage 
against the Chesapeake in 1807, they hotly protested against 
anything being done likely to rouse the hostility of England.* 
And now came in 1800, like a bolt from the blue, the news 
that Spain had ceded Louisiana to France. How large a ter- 
ritory it was, how far west it extended, what the character 
of the land was, no one knew, and few had more than the 
vaguest ideas about it; but one thing all apprehended; the 

7 "On general politics," Howe reported, "they appear more disposed 
to blame their own Government than ours. . . . The irritation against 
Great Britain is fast wearing off and the most anxious wish appears to 
be a renewal of the Commercial Intercourse between the Countries. . . . 
They feel how necessary her [England's] friendship is to their pros- 
perity." American Historical Revietv, XVII, 79-80. Boston, May 5, 
1808. From New York he wrote on May 31, of the feeling in Connecti- 
cut : "Here they speak upon the subject [the Embargo] with a degree 
of boldness that astonished me, and many of them even lamenting pub- 
licly that ever they were separated from Great Britain." Ibid., 83. 

8 The Chesapeake affair is frequently mentioned by Howe, who con- 
cluded that the majority in New England took a stand against their 
own government. At Philadelphia he found a celebration of the anni- 
versary of the affair, made to excite the people against England. "But 
it is by all discreet, well-disposed persons here (and this body I am 
happy to say is very numerous) looked upon with disgust." June 22, 
1808. Ibid., 94. 



204 THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 

cession included New Orleans and the control of the Missis- 
sippi, and the diplomatic world promptly exhausted itself in 
surmises as to its purpose. Jefferson and his Cabinet, in 
common with most thinking men in the country, felt that the 
event in any case portended danger for the United States, 
"It completely reverses," wrote Jefferson to Dupont in Paris, 
* ' all the political relations of the United States, and will form 
a new epoch in our political course. . . . There is on the 
globe one single spot, the possessor of which is our natural 
and habitual enemy. It is New Orleans, through which the 
produce of three-fourths of our territory must pass to market. ' ' 
To these fears succeeded the apprehension that England 
might seize Louisiana herself and thus unite the Gulf and the 
St. Lawrence by means of the Mississippi. Nor was there 
much doubt in Washington that the attempt of either France 
or England to establish a new empire would be promptly 
followed by the revolt or secession of the settlers in the 
Mississippi Valley from the United States and their adhesion 
to the new empire. Too many pledges of their readiness to 
join the Spanish had already been given to cause Jefferson 
to hesitate long. The crisis was, he wrote, "the most im- 
portant that the United States have ever met since their in- 
dependence ^ and which is to decide their future character 
and career." ^^ An embassy was despatched to France to 
purchase enough land at the mouth of the river to place its 
navigation definitely in the control of the United States." 
Napoleon, however, offered to sell the whole tract, moved per- 
haps by secret information of Jefferson's opinion that the at- 
tempt of France to use that land must force the United States 
to ally with England. For fifteen millions of dollars, Loui- 
siana was sold. "The sale," said Napoleon, "assures forever 
the power of the United States and I have given England a 
rival who sooner or later will humble her pride." "To-day," 
proudly wrote the United States Minister to France, "the 

oNote this significant use of the plural. 

10 Writings of Jefferson, Ford's ed., VIII, 203 ; 209, 210. 

11 /6W., VIII, 206. 



THE WAR OF 1812 205 

United States take their place among the powers of the first 
rank. "^2 

The immediate effect was to bring to an abrupt termina- 
tion the plots for the creation of revolutions in the Missis- 
sippi Valley, and to make possible the settlement of the diffi- 
culties with England without risking the secession of the 
western States and Territories. The victory of the English 
over the French and Spanish at Trafalgar in 1805, the al- 
most immediate decision to enforce strictly the prohibitions 
of the Navigation Acts and to stop direct trade between the 
West Indies and Europe, followed by the war of decrees in 
which the English and French effectually blockaded all trade 
throughout the world so far as paper proclamations could 
do it, all forced the United States to undertake negotiations 
for a settlement. How hard-pressed the government was is 
clear from the treaty negotiated with England in December 
1806. The Americans were to be allowed to carry goods to 
Europe from the West Indies by paying a duty upon them 
to England, and, unless the United States at once resisted the 
measures of Napoleon, the treaty would be void. Jefferson re- 
jected it at once. Further decrees militating against Ameri- 
can trade appeared in 1807 ; the frigate Chesapeake was fired 
upon by the English ship Leopurd and three American citi- 
zens and one English subject were seized from her crew. 
Congress had already prohibited the importation of English 
goods or colonial produce after certain dates, and now in 1807 
an act forbade American vessels to sail for foreign ports. 
The most vehement opposition to this Embargo at once 
became evident in New England and most shipping-centers; 
the act was evaded and even the Enforcement Act of the next 
year was unavailing to do more than cause open resistance to 
Federal authority along Lake Champlain and the proba- 
bility of armed revolt in New England. The policy was ob- 
viously injuring Americans far more than the English or 
French, who openly exulted over the folly of the Embargo; 

12 Note again this significant use of the plural in connection with the 
United States. 



206 THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 

the act was therefore repealed. After a long series of fur- 
ther attempts at legislation and negotiation, and after the re- 
ceipt of further insults from the English, war was declared in 
1812/3 

The new policy was the result of the passing of the control 
to a new set of political leaders — Clay, Calhoun, and later, 
Webster. They demanded the "extortion" from England of 
favorable terms; the "avenging" of the slights and insults 
the United States had suffered ; the conquest of Canada and 
the exclusion of the English from the continent.^* But, with- 
out adequate preparation for defense or offense on land, 
without a numerous and powerful navy, without money or a 
definite method of obtaining it, success was hardly possible. 
Indeed, the same factors fought for us and against us as in 
the Eevolution : the simple difference was that Washington 
and Greene had understood what those factors were and had 
used them with consummate skill; the men of 1812 seem 
hardly to have been conscious of their existence. The dis- 
tance which separated us from England, the size of the 
theater of war, which had made it impossible for her to con- 
quer us, made even more impossible the successful prosecu- 
tion of an offensive war by the United States against Eng- 
land. To be sure, she was engaged in a life and death struggle 
with Napoleon and could hardly spare ships and armies 
to fight the United States effectively at the same time. If 
a decisive rapid attack could have been delivered upon 
Canada by a large and really efficient army, Canada might 
have been conquered, and the width of the Atlantic and the 
wild character of the land would probably have prevented 
reconquest by England. But the prime cause of the war and 
its only justification was impressment, the right of search, the 

13 Howe wrote to Provost in 1809: "Mad as Parties are in America, 
I do not think that a Majority of the Population wish a War wilh 
Great Britain. The warmest among them will frankly own, they do 
not see any benefit they could obtain by it." American Historical Re- 
vieio, XVII, 350. 

1* See in particular Clay's speeches during the session of 1813. An- 
nals of Congress, 12 Congress, 2 session, especially pp. 667-676. 



THE WAR OF 1812 207 

attainment of commercial privileges in Europe and in the 
West Indies, the recognition of American ships as neutral 
carriers, and the concession of a privileged status to all neutral 
shipping. The conquest of Canada and the destruction 
of British frigates could not conceivably put sufficient pres- 
sure on England to compel her to grant these demands of the 
United States. The war was foredoomed to failure and the 
winning of a few brilliant naval victories could not conclude 
the issue in our favor. 

It was even more definitely decided against us by the out- 
break of "civil war" in America, Ever since it had become 
apparent after the signing of the Treaty of 1783 that the com- 
mercial question had not been settled, the mercantile com- 
munity and New England as a whole had more and more ve- 
hemently opposed the hostile attitude towards England as- 
sumed by the majority, and had more and more consistently 
declared for a policy of conciliation and the securing of such 
terms as could be had. The election of Jefferson had con- 
vinced the Federalists in New England that little was now 
to be expected from the central government and that their 
dearest hopes and most important interests would be sacri- 
ficed to the clamor of the mob. The purchase of Louisiana, 
the rejection of the various treaties framed with England 
between 1803 and 1812, the Embargo and non-intercourse 
legislation convinced them as the years went on that their 
expectations were only too certainly being realized. "We 
have a country governed by blockheads and dunces," the 
brother of the President of Yale College told the students; 
"our children are cast into the world from the breast and for- 
gotten ; filial piety is extinguished. ' ' 

"The principles of our Revolution," wrote Pickering to 
Cabot in 1804,^^ "point to a remedy — a separation. . . . 
The people of the East cannot reconcile their habits, views, 
and interests with those of the South and West. ... I do not 

15 This whole subject of secession and nullification in New England 
has been well covered by Henry Adams in Documents Relating to 'Sew 
England Federalism. 1800 to 1815. Boston, 1877. 



208 THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 

believe in the practicability of a long continued union. The 
Northern Confederacy would unite congenial characters, and 
present a fairer prospect of public happiness; while the 
Southern States, having a similarity of habits might be left 
to manage their affairs in their own way." Not only did 
the Federalists not believe one nation desirable or possible; 
they were perfectly sure that none existed. Indeed, upon 
the existence of three nations or groups of interests, they 
based their plans and by this ''fact" they justified their pro- 
posed secession. The annexation of Louisiana "was oppress- 
ive to the interests and destructive to the influence of the 
Northern section of the confederacy," wrote John Quincy 
Adams describing this plan years later, "whose right and 
duty it therefore was to secede from the new body politic 
and to constitute one of their own." The New England 
States, which found the Union very much to their interest in 
1860, quite forgot at that time that they had themselves es- 
poused and believed constitutional and patriotic the same ideas 
which the Southerners were then promulgating. 

Hamilton's decision against the scheme, the discovery that 
the immediate fears concerning the shift of influence to the 
South and West were not realized, checked the secession move- 
ment in 1804. In 1807 and 1808, the disastrous effect of the 
Embargo on New England revived it ; armed rebellion seemed 
almost certain, but the danger was averted by the repeal of 
the act and by the expectation of relief from the renewal of 
trade. When war was declared upon England in 1812, New 
England determined to wait no longer. While the new con- 
federacy was being organized and the movements concerted 
which should make its secession final and successful, passive 
resistance of the old colonial type was offered to the commands 
of the Federal government. The New Englanders declined to 
put their troops under command of United States officers, re- 
fused to allow them to serve outside the United States and 
in some cases outside their own borders. In all these States, 
loans were authorized and troops equipped for their own de- 
fense, an example followed in 1814 by New York, Pennsyl- 



THE WAR OF 1812 206 

vania, and Virginia. New England was then the moneyed 
community and from its resources the Federal government 
had expected to finance the war. The New Englanders de- 
clined to loan money to the government and instead gave aid 
and comfort to the enemies of the United States, supplying the 
English fleets and armies with beef and fuel ^® and even with 
the specie to pay the troops." At the crucial moment of the 
war, two weeks after the English had sacked Washington, one 
week after they had occupied parts of Maine, the State mili- 
tia of Massachusetts, 70,000 well-equipped and drilled men, 
was withdrawn from the armies of the United States. Rhode 
Island and Connecticut followed suit and the three entered 
into bonds for mutual defense. IMean while, behind closed 
doors, the Hartford Convention was elaborating a new con- 
stitution and concerting measures for the independence of the 
New England States. The "civil war" in America was not 
yet over ; the anti-national feeling was yet strong ; the vision 
of a single nation was as yet seen only by a few individuals ; 
but a great advance had been made towards nationalism. The 
old talk of the necessity of the independence and sovereignty 
of each separate State had disappeared ; the thirteen sover- 
eigns had been reduced to three — the East, the South, and 
the West. The development of the country and propinquity 
were doing their work slowly but surely. 

The seriousness of this crisis has not been fully enough 
recognized. For some weeks, the fate of the union hung in 
the balance, for not only was New England clearly ready to 
secede, but there were grave fears in Washington that the 
]\Iississippi Valley would either attempt to secede or would 
offer its allegiance to England, fears which found ample con- 
is "Supplies of the most essential kinds find their way not only to 
British ports and British armies at a distance, but the armies in our 
neighborhood with which our own are contending, derive from our 
ports and outlets a subsistence attainable with difficulty, if at all, from 
other sources." Madison. Special Message to Congress, Dec. 9, 1813. 
Richardson, Messages and Papers of the Presidents, 1, 540-1. 

17 So the British authorities in Canada reported to England. See the 
quotations from manuscripts in the Canadian Archives in Henry Adams, 
History of the United States, VII, 146. 



210 THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 

firmation in the news that an English army had been des- 
patched to New Orleans.^^ There could scarcely be any 
other reason for such an expedition than the expectation of 
winning a great domain with the assistance of the inhabitants. 
The fate of the United States was at stake in the winter of 
1814 and 1815; the anti-nationalist movement seemed this 
time certain of success and the creation of two new confed- 
eracies more than probable. At the critical moment came the 
news of the signing of the Peace of Ghent with England and 
of the victory of Jackson over the English at New Orleans. 
The rejoicing was extreme, not in the least because the Treaty 
of Peace accorded us the favorable terms which the war had 
been undertaken to extort, but because the sectional strife in 
America had been decided in favor of the Federal govern- 
ment.^^ The rebellions had been crushed without actual war- 
fare; the union had been preserved without the memory of 
deadly combat to stand in the way of reconciliation. The 
Hartford Convention dissolved; the talk of secession died a 
natural death ; New England and the West tried to act as if 
nothing had been intended, and the various parties and in- 
terests returned to Congress to debate the common problems. 
Nothing had been settled; the cause of dissidence was still 
present ; but for the moment the solution by force or by seces- 
sion was definitely abandoned by every one. When it was 
next mooted, the development of the country had transferred 
the seat of discontent to the South. 

18 Howe found in 1809 that "Great apprehensions are excited for the 
Safety of Louisiana. A part of the new Levee of 6000 men has been 
sent to that Quarter." American Historical Review, XVII, 349. 

18 So great was the anxiety in 1808 that Howe concluded that the 
Federal government would declare war with England as a last desperate 
expedient for holding the union together. "And if our Government 
[the British] should not be disposed to let them out of their own Trap 
[the Embargo], and the Government of America should continue their 
present system, not a doubt can be entertained, but that a separation 
of the Eastern States will ensue. If the answer of our Government 
should not meet the wishes of the ruling Party, they will then endeavor 
to preserve the Union hy plunging the Country into a War with Great 
Britain, in hopes that a sense of common danger, will excite a unanim- 
ity, they will have no other means of effecting." Ihid, 



XVI 

**THE AMERICAN SYSTEM" 

The "War of 1812 scarcely improved the commercial rela- 
tions of the United States with Europe, but it had a profound 
influence on our history because it gave American statesmen 
for the first time a clear conception of the fact that our 
fundamental difficulties were economic and not political or 
administrative, issues to be solved by the plow and the loom 
rather than by the sword. The end of the war in 1815 
happened practically to coincide with the close of the Na- 
poleonic wars in Europe and the natural resumption of peace- 
ful pursuits on the continent. Thus disappeared, in a mo- 
ment, as it were, the market for American food-stuffs and 
naval stores and the opportunity for American ships in the 
carrying trade. Great as had been the dangers and serious 
as had been the obstacles in the way of the complete utiliza- 
tion of the opportunity by Americans, many fortunes had 
been built upon it and a really flourishing mercantile marine 
had been developed. The resumption of manufactures on the 
continent was a great blow to the English manufacturers, 
whose business had flourished, not only because of the In- 
dustrial Revolution and the use of the new machinery, but 
also because the state of war had left them the only manu- 
facturers in Europe, and had given them, despite the mili- 
tating regulations of Napoleon, almost a monopoly of the 
European market. "With the return of peace, their market 
largely disappeared, a large surplusage of production resulted, 
prices accordingly fell rapidly, and English goods at low rates 
flooded the American market. The disappearance of our mar- 
ket abroad both during the continuance of the Embargo and 
after the close of the war left the American merchants with 

211 



212 THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 

a large variety of produce which they could not sell and re- 
vealed to the eyes of even the blindest the fact that there was 
no home market for what we produced. The flood of English 
manufactured goods and the practical lack of anything else 
on the American market made it equally clear that we did 
not produce much of anything which we ourselves needed. 
We were utterly dependent upon Europe to buy what we had 
to sell and to produce for us what we wished to buy. And 
Europe was three thousand miles away and was subject to 
wars and commercial crises! 

The period, which began with the institution of the Fed- 
eral government in 1789 and closed with the War of 1812, 
had been one of unusually rapid economic development in 
America, and had produced an entirely new alignment of in- 
terests in the country. A distinct entity had begun to form 
in the South concerned with the growing of cotton, another 
in the North chiefly busied with the manufacture of cotton 
cloth, and a third to the West intent upon the conquest of the 
wilderness by the plow as rapidly as possible. 

Cotton had been found by Columbus and had been used by 
the early colonists sufficiently to cause it to be enumerated 
by the Navigation Act in 1660 as a marketable commodity, 
but it had never rivaled tobacco, indigo, or rice as a great 
staple crop. A great variety of circumstances, juxtaposited 
by chance, united to make it the long-sought medium of ex- 
change between America and Europe, the valuable commodity 
the demand for which in Europe should increase as fast as 
the ability of America to increase its rate of production. The 
pre-revolutionary non-importation agreements and the attempt 
to find a substitute for woolens first called attention to it. 
Then came the invention in England of machinery for spinning 
and weaving cotton; and the accident of fashion created a 
demand for the new cloth. At or about the same time (1786), 
the first crop of the sea-island cotton, grown near Charleston, 
S. C, was marketed, and the extraordinary length and the 
soft and silky quality of its fiber was first appreciated. It met 
at once with favor and within a few years was selling for a 



"THE AMERICAN SYSTEM" 213 

dollar and even two dollars a pound. Cotton came as a god- 
send to the South. The Southerners were seeking a new staple 
crop, for the indigo industry had depended on the English 
bounty for its profit and had therefore been ruined by its 
discontinuance in 1775. The rice-cultivation was limited to 
the swamp lands of South Carolina and Georgia ; and the Eu- 
ropean demand for American tobacco was always distinctly 
limited, since America did not produce the finest grades. Cot- 
ton therefore promptly attracted attention and was tried in 
many districts, and just as the planters had found that the 
upland cotton was filled with seeds so difficult to remove that 
the process destroyed both fiber and profit (the sea-island cot- 
ton was easy to clean), Eli Whitney invented a simple ma- 
chine with which even an ignorant slave could rapidly cleanse 
huge amounts from seeds. The European demand, the new 
machinery to use the fiber, the gin to clean it, the need for 
a new Southern staple crop, all combined to make cotton 
within twenty years the greatest asset the South had and the 
most important single product of the Atlantic coast. 9,000 
bales were produced in 1791 ; 211,000 were grown in 1801 ; 
and at the close of the war of 1812, 458,000. 

Cotton made slavery profitable and therefore permanent. 
In 1789, it had been the rather general sentiment that slav- 
ery was likely to die of inanition and that its extension was 
hardly likely. In 1815, it was beyond question that a great 
and a permanent interest of the South had appeared which 
it did not share with other sections of the country. 

As definite an interest, and one as obviously local, had ap- 
peared in New England and in the middle States. The Em- 
bargo, followed by the War of 1812, had compelled America 
to do without English goods and the high prices manufactured 
goods commanded had stimulated the production at home of 
cotton and woolen cloth, some pig-iron, glass, pottery, and a 
few other articles. Of all these industries "created" hy the 
war, the most successful was cotton-spinning. In 1805, 4,500 
spindles were at work; the imposition of the Embargo raised 
the number to 31,000 in 1809 and to 87,000 in 1810, while 



214 THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 

the war resulted in an expansion to 130,000 spindles. Where 
1,000 bales of raw cotton had been used in 1805, 90,000 bales 
were being consumed in 1815. Slater at Pawtucket had in- 
troduced the new English machinery for spinning, and Lowell 
had instituted near Boston, in some of the first true factories 
in the world, power looms for weaving cotton cloth. All 
through New England, abundant water-power and unremu- 
nerative agriculture produced conditions favorable for manu- 
factures. The new industries spread rapidly. Apparently 
the war had created industries and a new sectional interest 
as definite in its needs as the "peculiar institution" in the 
South. 

Moreover, a third section had grown over night, as it were, 
in the Mississippi Valley. By 1815, on the great prairies 
where the Iroquois had so long hunted, where in 1783 had 
been only a few scattered hamlets and a few daredevil ad- 
venturers, were four fully organized States, Kentucky, Ten- 
nessee, Ohio, Louisiana, and five territories nearly populous 
enough for admission as States. The band of settlement had 
spread westward from the Hudson and Mohawk Valleys into 
the old Northwest Territory, from Virginia and North Caro- 
lina through the Cumberland Gap into Kentucky, Tennessee, 
Missouri, southern Illinois and Indiana, and west from 
Georgia and South Carolina into the rich river-bottoms of 
the Gulf country where cotton was most profitable. This 
last section became soon an integral part of the South, bound 
to it by an identity of interests, but the more northern dis- 
tricts found themselves above the cotton-belt and west of 
the mountains, shut off in the great river valley with char- 
acteristic problems of their own. The provision of adequate 
facilities of transportation by means of roads, canals, turn- 
pikes, was seen at a very early date to be the most difficult 
problem, upon whose solution rested the possibility of an im- 
mediate development and utilization of the land. Unless the 
crop could be moved south or east, there was no purpose 
in raising more than the individual needed for his own 
sustenance. But the crop could not be moved and exchanged 



"THE AMERICAN SYSTEM" 215 

for manufactured goods without money, and of that the 
West had little and was never able to retain for long what 
little it did obtain. Compared to these, the more immediate 
problems of the division and allotment of land, the institu- 
tion of administration, the taxation of undeveloped land, 
the provision for schools and universities were simple and 
were rapidly and on the whole admirably dealt with. 

The net result, however, was the creation of three distinct 
and varying interests. Calhoun in an interview with Ham- 
mond in 1831 thus accurately described the situation. "He 
then spoke of the three great interests of the Nation, the 
North, the South, and the West. They had been struggling 
in a fierce war with each other, and he thought the period 
was approaching that was to determine whether they could 
be reconciled or not so as to perpetuate the Union. He was 
of the opinion that they could. The interest of the North 
was a manufacturing and protecting one, that of the South, 
Free Trade, and that of the West was involved in the distri- 
bution of the lands and Internal Improvements." This 
"fierce war" of which Calhoun spoke occupied the period 
from 1815 to 1840 to the practical exclusion of every other 
subject and to some extent has persisted throughout American 
history and is still of consequence. In this guise, the civil 
strife in America went on. 

The great influx of English manufactured goods, which 
poured into the country in 1815 and 1816, drove the American 
cotton and woolen goods off the market. Under any circum- 
stances, the new factories could scarcely expect to produce 
as cheaply as the English merchants could export goods, and 
certainly were helpless in competition with English goods 
sold actually at a sacrifice because of the overproduction. 
The cry went up from the new manufacturers : having cre- 
ated us by the Embargo and the war, you must now pro- 
tect our infant industries. The logic of facts seemed un- 
deniable. Before the war, no manufactures; after the war, 
flourishing industries; the Embargo and the war had been 
equivalent to a protection of 100% ; therefore protection 



216 THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 

could create industries, and by protective tariffs American 
industries could be enabled to compete successfully with un- 
derpaid foreign labor. The argument of course was applied 
to the encouragement of industries, necessary to the country, 
sure to be profitable if started, but whose rise was prevented 
by superficial and artificial difficulties of a nature to be readily 
overcome by the imposition of a duty on the foreign prod- 
uct equivalent to the difference between the cost of manu- 
facture in America and that in Europe plus the cost of 
freight. The essential point is that no permanent causes 
hindered the development of the industry, though it is only 
fair to add that the enthusiastic supporters of the tariff 
scouted the notion that there was an industry which could 
not profitably be pursued in the United States. 

A low tariff had been imposed in 1789 and had proved its 
value as a money-getter by providing a sufficient revenue 
to meet the expenses of the new administration. Indeed, 
previous to 1860, the tariff provided nearly the whole Federal 
revenue. In 1816, a tariff was imposed, however, with the 
intention of protecting the new manufactures; the dutiea 
were all raised and new duties on textiles were imposed, 
amounting to about twenty or twenty-five per cent of the 
value of the article. An agitation against the high tariff 
was at once begun in the South and in many of the interior 
districts, which had depended entirely on Europe for manu- 
factured goods and which still depended on finding a market 
abroad for the great staples, tobacco, cotton, and rice. To 
their thinking, the new scheme was intended to force them 
to pay for the development of manufactures in the East, to 
compel them to renounce their own particular interest, which 
lay of course in complete freedom of trade, and particularly 
in the ability to bring back into the country as large an 
amount of goods as possible in return for the product they 
exported. This they complained was unfair; the interest of 
one section was favored at the expense of the interest of 
another. 

In 1820 and in 1824, Clay and others fought valiantly 



"THE AMERICAN SYSTEM" 217 

for "the American system" of encouraging home manu- 
factures, and in the end their logic won the day. "We 
have shaped our industry, our navigation, our commerce," 
Clay told the House in 1824,^ "in reference to an extraordi- 
nary war in Europe, and to foreign markets which no longer 
exist. . . . "Whilst we have cultivated with assiduous care our 
foreign resources, we have suffered those at home to wither 
in a state of neglect and abandonment." "We have seen 
that our exclusive dependence upon the foreign market must 
lead to still severer distress, to impoverishment, to ruin. We 
must give a new direction to some portion of our industry. 
We must speedily adopt a genuine American policy. Still 
cherishing the foreign market, let us create also a home 
market, to give further scope to the consumption of the 
produce of American industry. Let us counteract the policy 
of foreigners, and withdraw the support which we now give 
to their industry, and stimulate that of our own country. . . . 
The creation of a home market is not only necessary to 
procure for our agriculture a just reward for its labors, but 
it is indispensable to obtain a supply of our necessary wants. 
If we cannot sell, we cannot buy. . . . We must naturalize 
the arts in our country ... by adequate protection against 
the otherAvise overwhelming influence of foreigners." 

That the protective tariff was likely to burden the South 
and West, Clay clearly appreciated and a distinctive part of 
the "American system" was the open recognition of the 
necessity of protecting the special interests of all three sec- 
tions. "Now our people," he declared, "present the spec- 
tacle of a vast assemblage of jealous rivals, all eagerly rush- 
ing to the seaboard, jostling each other in their way, to 
hurry off to glutted foreign markets the perishable produce 
of their labor. The tendency of that policy, in conformity 
to which this bill is prepared, is to transform these competi- 
tors into friends and mutual customers, and, by the reciprocal 
exchange of their respective productions, to place the con- 

1 This and other valuable papers and speeches on the tariff will be 
conveniently found in Taussig's State Papers and Speeches on the Tariff. 



218 THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 

federacy upon the most solid of all foundations, the basis 
of common interest," "Our confederacy comprehends within 
its vast limits great diversity of interests, agricultural, plant- 
ing, farming, commercial, navigating, fishing, manufactur- 
ing. No one of these interests is felt in the same degree 
and cherished with the same solicitude throughout all parts 
of the Union. Some of them are peculiar to particular sec- 
tions of our common country. . . . Here, then, is a case for 
mutual concession, for fair compromise. ... It sacrifices the 
interest of neither section to that of the other; neither, it 
is true, gets all that it wants, nor is subject to all that it 
fears. ' ' 

The peculiar interest of the South had already been a 
subject of great concern and recognition of its seriousness 
had already been ample. Profit from cotton cultivation was 
even thus early seen to depend upon the ability of the planter 
to shift his slaves from the fields partially exhausted by 
successive crops to new virgin soil where the proportionate 
return for the labor was enormously greater. So great was 
it, that the Southerners regarded in the light of a calamity 
the arrival of the day when the supply of virgin land should 
be exhausted and the cotton-culture should be forced to be- 
come intensive instead of extensive. By 1819, the whole of 
the land east of the Mississippi available for cotton had al- 
ready been settled sufficiently to be divided into States and 
admitted to the Union. The resort thither of planters was 
seen to be progressing at a rate which would within a decade 
or two exhaust the supply of the very best land. West of the 
river in the great domain of Louisiana, the southern corner 
had early been settled and admitted to the Union, and now 
in 1819 a second great State, Missouri, was knocking for 
admission. 

The question of the extension of slavery was not at the 
time, however, of as momentous consequence as the preser- 
vation of the balance of power between the particular interests 
in Congress. The House, whose members were proportioned 
among the States according to population, was already con- 



"THE AMERICAN SYSTEM" 219 

trolled by the States which found staple crops unprofitable 
and which could therefore not be expected to defend either 
free trade or slavery. In the Senate, where the States were 
each represented by two members, the balance between the 
slave and free States were exactly even, and had always 
been so, due to the admission of the new States in pairs, one 
free and one slave. Now ]\Iaine and INIissouri had both ap- 
plied for admission, and, should both be admitted as free 
States, the South would at once be in the minority and 
the sacrifice of its agricultural interests to the manufactures 
of the East seemed to be an almost certain result of the 
loss of political equality.^ The difficulty was frankly recog- 
nized; the right of the South to sufficient power to protect 
itself, conceded. But the principle itself — that the interests 
of the three sections of the country were mutually antag- 
onistic, and destructive of each other, and that only a balance 
of power between them in the national government could 

2 This was a notion long familiar and had been stated in 1811 with 
great force and clarity by Josiah Quincy of Massachusetts in a notable 
speech in the House of Representatives. The admission of Louisiana 
would be, he claimed, "nothing less than [the exercise of] a power, 
changing all the proportions of the weight and influence possessed by 
the potent sovereignties composing this Union. [Note this acceptance 
of States' sovereignty by a Massachusetts man.] . . . This is not so 
much a question concerning the exercise of sovereignty, as it is who 
shall be sovereign. . . . The Proportion of the political weight of each 
sovereign State, constituting this union depends upon the number of 
the States, which have a voice under the compact. [Hayne used this 
same word to designate the Constitution in 1830.] ... I hold my life, 
liberty and property, ... by a better tenure than any this national 
government can give. . . . We hold these by the laws, customs, and 
principles of the commonwealth of Massachusetts. Behind her ample 
shield, we find refuge and feel safety. . . . With respect to this Icve 
of our union, concerning which so much sensibility is expressed, I have 
no fear about analyzing its nature. There is in it nothing of mystery. 
... I confess it, the first public love of my heart is the Commonwealth 
of Massachusetts. There is my fireside; there are the tombs of my 
ancestors. . . . The love of this union grows out of this attachment to 
my native soil and is rooted in it. I cherish it because it affords the 
best external hope of her peace, her prosperity, her independence." 
This will be destroyed when the western States are admitted, for they 
will outnumber the original States. Hart, Contemporaries, III, 410-414, 



220 THE RISE OP THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 

preserve the Union — was felt to be fraught with the greatest 
danger for the welfare of all. That the question should be 
not simply an issue of morals or of rival institutions but 
of the political power of great sections of the country whose 
interests seemed to be and certainly were assumed to be 
irreconcilable, was seen to contain possibilities which caused 
all to fear for the future. "The words civil war and dis- 
union are uttered almost without emotion," wrote Clay,^ 
while Cobb of Georgia predicted that the Northern men 
had "kindled a fire which all the waters of the ocean cannot 
put out, which seas of blood only can extinguish. ' ' * Clay 
even predicted the establishment of new confederacies, while 
John Quincy Adams entrusted to his diary thoughts regard- 
ing the desirability of dissolving the union and reorganiz- 
ing it "on the fundamental principle of emancipation." As 
to civil war, he went on, "so glorious would be its final 
issue, that as God shall judge me, I do not say that it is 
not to be desired. ' ' ^ Almost calmly. Northern and South- 
ern men considered the dissolution of the "confederacy" 
and decided that end not undesirable. Not yet was there 
anything approaching an agreement that the existence of 
one government, of one nation composed of all the individuals 
in America, either existed or could exist or ought to exist. 
The loyalty of men to their States had been transferred 
to their sections ; it was yet to be transformed into allegiance 
to the country as a whole. 

The difficulty was compromised in 1820 by the admission 
of Maine as a free State, of Missouri as a slave State, and by 
the division of the Louisiana Purchase into two zones, one, 
north of 36° 30', which should be free territory, and one 
south of that line which should be slave territory. 

The West had yet to receive its share of the compromise 
and clamored for Internal Improvements. In 1808, GaJ- 

3 Private Correspondence, 61. 
* Annals of Congress, 15 Cong., 2 Sess., I, 1204. 

^Memoirs, IV, 531. See also Writings of Jefferson, Ford's ed., X, 
li7. 



"THE AMERICAN SYSTEM" 221 

latin, whose financial ability had gone far to make the Anti- 
Federalist regime successful, recommended a Federal system 
of roads and canals to open up the great areas in the Mis- 
sissippi Valley. These would obviously be of great value if 
proper facilities of transportation could be provided. As 
yet, however, their inhabitants did not themselves possess 
sufficient capital to promote so costly an undertaking. The 
benefit would really redound to the country as a whole and 
furnished reason for the adoption of a policy of Internal 
Improvements by the Federal government. To the declar- 
ation that sufficient powers were not vested in Congress by 
the Constitution, answer was made that the right to charter 
a bank and to purchase Louisiana were not explicitly men- 
tioned either. There was a general feeling that the develop- 
ment of the Southwest and of the Ohio Valley by Federal 
money would be a discrimination in favor of those States 
against the East; but to prove that roads and canals were 
necessary was to establish, to the satisfaction of the western 
men, the constitutionality of the power to build them. Was 
the Constitution made only for the eastern States? In 1817 
and 1818, projects were introduced in Congress by Calhoun 
and Clay for a comprehensive system of internal improve- 
ments and in 1818 the national road from Cumberland on 
the Potomac to Wheeling w^as finished; but nothing further 
was done till 1825, when Adams approved of a broad project 
and over two millions of dollars were voted for the building 
of roads in the West. A plan was also mooted to distribute 
the lands reserved to the Federal government in the western 
States to settlers at fifty cents an acre instead of the rate 
of two dollars and a half already established. 

The appropriation of money for internal improvements 
and the tariff of 1828, which raised the duties so much that 
it was promptly dubbed the Tariff of Abominations, roused 
the South to indignation. Calhoun became spokesman and 
in his ''Exposition" tried to demonstrate that the tariff 
and the internal improvements were responsible for the low 
price of cotton and the high price of other commodities. The 



222 THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 

tariff stole the profit of the cotton-crop by compelling the 
planters to pay a duty on the goods they bought with the 
proceeds abroad ; the indirect taxes of the government further 
depleted their incomes to furnish the money to build roads 
in the West. The attempt of the government to foster the 
interests of the other sections was injurious to the South. 
In South Carolina plans were made to "nullify" the ob- 
noxious Federal laws by an appeal to the reserved powers 
of a sovereign State. 

In reality, the general commercial crisis of the period fol- 
lowing the close of the Napoleonic wars was the cause of 
most of the difficulties in the South. The demand for cot- 
ton in Europe w^as not as great as before because the overpro- 
duction of the earlier years had been succeeded by retrench- 
ment; the production of cotton at the South had however 
increased by leaps and bounds and the supply was there- 
fore greater, though the demand was smaller; a great drop 
in price was inevitable. On the other hand, manufactured 
goods had been abnormally cheap in the South because of 
the overproduction in England, the resumption of manu- 
facture in Europe, and the growth of industries in New 
England. The supply in this direction had far exceeded 
the demand and had consequently reduced prices. The re- 
duction of the output in Europe necessary to restore the 
normal balance between the demand and the supply had 
begun, however, by the time the tariff of 1824 was passed; 
had raised the prices on manufactured goods considerably, 
and the increase was of course attributed by the South en- 
tirely to the tariff, whose avowed purpose had been to in- 
crease the price of foreign goods in America. Furthermore, 
in the States just north of the cotton-belt, in the tobacco- 
belt, the border States, as they came to be called, Virginia, 
Maryland, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Missouri, slavery was no 
longer as profitable as it had once been, and the commercial 
crisis had accentuated the planters' troubles until plans were 
actually proposed in Virginia for the purchase and deportation 
to Africa of the surplusage of slaves. 



"THE AMERICAN SYSTEM" 223 

To the excited Southerners, the union, the existence of the 
Federal government, seemed solely responsible for their ills. 
Did it not allow the North and West to pass the tariff? 
Did not the Constitution recognize and legalize this sacrifice 
of the interests of a part and that too without possibility 
of immediate redress by legislative methods? Of what value 
was such a union? "I consider the Constitution a dead 
letter," declared John Eandolph in the House of Represent- 
atives in 1824. "I have no faith in parchment, sir, ... If 
you draw the last shilling from our pockets, what are the 
checks of the Constitution to us? A fig for the Constitu- 
tion! . . . There is no magic in the word union." The 
President of South Carolina College was cheered when he 
said in a public meeting that the time had come to calculate 
the value of the Union, and Webster later declared himself 
convinced in 1828 that the plan for a Southern Confederacy 
had been generally received with favor by the Southern 
leaders. Was that whither the United States was tending, to 
separation into two confederacies? When the value of the 
Constitution was calculated was there nothing but a piece 
of parchment, and no magic in the word union? 

Senator Hayne of South Carolina had delivered a power- 
ful speech in the Senate in favor of the old anti-national 
view of the central government. He obviously looked upon 
the union as a question of present and even temporary 
expediency, "nothing more than a mere matter of profit and 
loss, ' ' complained Webster ; not as the embodiment and repre- 
sentative of a great and glorious nation but as a connection 
between the States whose beneficial operation was sufficiently 
doubtful to require constant and careful inspection of its 
working in order to determine the expediency of its longer 
continuance. When he declared the Constitution "a com- 
pact" to which the States were the parties, he denied that 
the Constitution had created a nation or that one existed. 
The States were sovereign, he insisted, had always been 
sovereign and had never in any way explicitly or implicitly 
parted with their sovereignty; and were therefore, as parties 



224 THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 

to the compact, obviously capable of judging whether the 
compact for the creation of a central government had been 
observed and whether or not it was expedient to continue 
under it. The nature of the general government as defined by 
its own Constitution made it incapable of coercing a State 
which solemnly and advisedly declined longer to obey the 
Federal statutes. If the Federal government were to be 
allowed to interpret the Constitution and decide upon the 
extent of its own powers, the sovereignty, independence, and 
liberty of the States would disappear, and the United States 
would be, what its framers had never intended it to be, an 
entity in and of itself superior to the States, which would 
then be bound to obey its behests. To say that the Consti- 
tution prevented the Southern States from nullifying the 
recent oppressive acts of the Federal government would 
mean that those States had no resource against tyranny, save 
armed rebellion. 

He appealed to the founders of the Republic, to the de- 
bates of the Constitutional Convention, to the Virginia and 
Kentucky Resolutions. His was, he claimed, the historical 
Republican doctrine, ''first promulgated by the fathers of 
the faith," whose triumph in 1800 had "saved the Consti- 
tution at its last gasp." "Give us the Constitution of 
Jefferson," he exclaimed, "give us the federal compact of 
independent sovereign States, . . . the Constitution of 1787 
as its framers meant it and constructed it, and we shall deem 
ourselves satisfied and safe." That Hayne had accurately 
described the idea of the Constitution held by the majority 
of people in most districts since 1789 it was difficult to deny ; 
that upon those assumptions every section of the country had 
planned secession and nullified Federal measures was equally 
incontestable; but, if such were the truth, it was equally 
clear that no nation existed in America nor could be created 
so long as a powerful section of the community stood ready 
to contest the expediency and desirability of its existence. 
Hayne took his stand upon precedent and history, upon 
present expediency, and made the welfare of individual States 



"THE AMERICAN SYSTEM" 225 

his criterion of the excellence of union. To his thinking, 
unless absolute unanimity of opinion existed, unless every 
State were convinced that its interests were furthered by 
the federal bond as it would itself have advanced them 
had it been wholly independent, the union was inexpedient. 

Webster, in his great speech in reply, delivered early in 
the year 1830, took his stand upon the Constitution as it 
was, not as it had been thought to be; the document itself, 
he said, would clear all controversies. He took as his test 
of expediency the welfare of all the States and insisted 
that the w^elfare of each individual State would be better 
served by union than by disunion. Above the States, he 
placed the nation: the Constitution was not a compact be- 
tween States, sovereign entities, but a supreme and funda- 
mental law created by the people of the whole country, 
making of them one nation. "The truth is . . . the people 
of the United States are one people. . . . The very end and 
purpose of the Constitution was to make them one people 
in these particulars; and it has effectually accomplished its 
object. ... It is the People and not the States who have 
entered into this compact, and it is the people of all the 
United States." Webster took the highest possible ground 
and declared that a nation already existed, had long existed, 
and that the sovereignty of the States had been surrendered 
by the adoption of the Constitution. He thus decided in the 
negative all the issues Hayne had raised. The Federal govern- 
ment and the State governments were both limited in power; 
both were founded by the people, and controlled by them; 
but of the two, pending further action of the people, the 
Federal government was supreme. Upon it, through the 
Constitution, the people as a whole had conferred the right 
to decide all disputes as to the meaning of the Constitution. 
Secession and nullification by any State were under the 
Constitution impossible. "Sir, the very chief end, the main 
design for which the whole Constitution was framed and 
adopted was to establish a government that should not be 
obliged to act through State agency or depend on State 



226 THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 

opinion or State discretion." From the Union had resulted 
safety at home, "national, social, and personal happiness." 
In his peroration, he pronounced as a rallying cry for the 
men of his own day and of a later generation, the flaming 
words — "dear to every true American heart" — "Liberty and 
Union, now and forever, one and inseparable. ' ' 

For the first time, the great majority of Americans saw 
w^hat their Constitution actually said; for the first time they 
realized that it proclaimed the creation of one nation; for 
the first time under impressive circumstances, a man of promi- 
nence boldly proclaimed the actual existence of a nation, de- 
clared himself proud of it and eloquently argued for its 
"continuance." The vision of nationality was seen; it had 
now to be realized.^ 

It was even doubtful whether it would not be at once 
authoritatively denied. The jubilation in New England 
found no echo in the South. What attitude President Jack- 
son would take was not known. At a great banquet to cel- 
ebrate the birthday of Jefferson, a series of toasts was ar- 
ranged to put the issue squarely before the President and to 
force him to declare himself for one nation or for a compact 
of sovereign States. Amid breathless silence, Jackson pulled 
his lank form erect and gave his toast : ' ' Our Federal Union. 
It must be preserved." 

6 The truth of this statement can scarcely be better demonstrated 
than by quoting the conclusions of one of the keenest foreign observers 
who ever visited this country. Alexis de Tocqueville described what 
he saw and heard here in 1834-5. "We ought not to confound the 
future prospects of the republic with those of the Union. The Union 
is an accident, which will only last as long as circumstances are favor- 
able to its existence; but a republican form of Government seems to 
me to be the natural state of the Americans. . . . The Union exists 
principally in the law which formed it; one revolution, one change in 
public opinion might destroy it forever; but the republic has a much 
deeper foundation to rest upon. ... It was impossible at the founda- 
tion of the States, and it would still be difficult to establish a central 
administration in America. The inhabitants are dispersed over too 
great a space, and separated by too many natural obstacles, for one 
man to undertake to direct the details of their existence. America is 
therefore preeminently the country of provincial and municipal govern- 
ment." Democracy in America, 1, 425-6. London, 1875. 



"THE AMERICAN SYSTEM" 227 

The advisability of national government had been argued, 
its expediency questioned ; statements freely made that a 
second confederacy was far preferable to a national bond; 
but there was little doubt that the North agreed with Web- 
ster and stood for one nation and rejected the notion of 
two. 

Characteristically, the difficulty was compromised. "Where, 
in 1824, the policy of the satisfaction of all interests had been 
espoused, Jackson pronounced himself in favor of the re- 
striction of Federal powers and refused to assist any interest. 
States' rights and nullification he declined to recognize. 
South Carolina must submit to Federal authority. 

At the South there was no desire to force the issue at 
this time; they felt sure of obtaining what they asked by 
some simpler method than a test of strength. For the South 
had control of the Federal government and was growing 
so fast in wealth and strength that an equally rapid develop- 
ment of the North seemed hardly possible. There was little 
to gain, they thought, by actual secession and the conces- 
sion of a victory to Webster in the forum did not seem mate- 
rially to affect the real issue. The talk of secession was there- 
fore dropped. 

To remove the most obvious grievances, the high tariff 
was repealed and a low one adopted; the internal improve- 
ments which the West demanded were declared unconsti- 
tutional. As the West and South both objected to the ex- 
istence of the United States Bank and attributed to its 
manipulations the scarcity of currency in their territory and 
their condition as debtor communities, the Bank was also 
declared unconstitutional, an "un-American monopoly," and 
was brought to a sudden end as a governmental agency by 
the removal of Federal deposits in 1833 to certain selected 
State banks. The government declined to renew the char- 
ter, and completely changed the fiscal policy of Hamilton. 
Finally, after various expedients had been tried and rejected, 
an independent Treasury was established in 1843 into which 
the government's funds were to be paid, where they were to 



228 THE RISE OF THE AlVIERICAN PEOPLE 

be conserved, whence the currency was to be issued and 
controlled, and by which, in general, the fiscal business of 
the government was to be transacted. If the advocates of 
nationality had now a theoretical victory in the forum, the 
anti-nationalist party had shorn the Federal government of 
such national functions as it had been discharging and had 
in large measure reversed many of its most important poli- 
cies. Webster might be right as to what the Constitution 
said; but States' sovereignty would be safe until the people 
as a whole should read the document through his spectacles 
and should elect an administration to enforce his reading of 
its provisions. 



XVII 

JACKSONIAN DEMOCRACY 

It is not possible in so brief a sketch as this to do more than 
advert to the significant constitutional development of the 
period from 1789 to 1829 during which the warp and woof 
of American democracy became thoroughly established, but it 
is essential at least to enumerate the conspicuous elements 
which practice introduced into the original concept. 

The democratic institutions which to-day exist in the United 
States are too firmly knit into the "bone and gristle" of 
the nation and are too clearly adapted to our conditions to 
have been "created" by any one document or by any one 
man. Because certain definite stages of development became 
perfectly clear at certain epochs, because certain men were 
largely responsible for informing the public mind of the 
conditions actually existing and for directing its choice of 
a remedy, we have been in the habit of writing about Hamil- 
tonianism, Jeffersonianism, and Jacksonianism. In reality 
the theories and concepts, the administrative machinery by 
which we have actually been governed, are too complex and 
too numerous to have been produced by anything short of the 
slow growth of the community. "It is a great mistake," 
said Mr. Mercer in the Constitutional Convention, "to sup- 
pose that the paper we are to propose will govern the United 
States. It is the men whom it will bring into the Government 
and interest in maintaining it that is to govern them. The 
paper will only mark out the mode and the form. Men are 
the substance and must do the business. ' ' ^ The form of the 
Constitution was evolved in the various State constitutions 
made during the Revolution; the federal idea came from an 

1 Hunt's Madison's Notes, II, 165. 

229 



230 THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 

attempt to find some solution for the economic difBculties 
whose pressure was so seriously felt after the war was ended ; 
the first administrative traditions were created by the pressure 
of necessity and the genius of Hamilton. Jeffersonian democ- 
racy, on the other hand, was the product of the various at- 
tempts to interpret the actual document called the Constitu- 
tion; while Jacksonian democracy, in which we recognize the 
final product of American genius, was caused by the growth 
of the country, especially of the West, and by the attempt to 
"live" democracy. 

The Constitution of the United States is a very large docu- 
ment indeed and provides for the doing of many things not 
foreseen by the framers of the "paper" and for the doing of 
many things they saw would be necessary, in other ways than 
those they deemed best. With the passage of the twelfth 
amendment in 1801, the feature most admired by the framers 
was practically abandoned. It had not been thought desir- 
able that the people should in any direct way influence the 
selection of the President, and accordingly an electoral col- 
lege had been provided which the people should elect and 
which should then calmly and deliberately vote for the fittest 
man for the highest post, the candidate receiving the next 
largest number of votes, indicated therefore in the electors' 
opinion as most desirable second choice, to become Vice-Presi- 
dent. The electors were forced by the Constitution to meet 
in the various States and to vote in absolute ignorance of 
what was actually being done elsewhere. After the first two 
elections, it became apparent that some sort of previous agree- 
ment among the electors would be essential to prevent a too 
great scattering of the votes and the accidental choice by a 
ridiculously small minority of some obviously unsuitable and 
objectionable candidate. So completely successful was the 
attempt at previous agreement in 1800 that Jefferson and 
Burr received the same number of votes, no candidate received 
a majority, the election was thrown into Congress, and an un- 
seemly scramble for votes ensued, in which Jefferson, whom 
nearly every one desired for President, was almost defeated. 



JACKSONIAN DEMOCRACY 231 

An amendment was at once passed providing that the electors 
should vote for both President and Vice-President instead 
of simply for President. The provision that the electors 
should meet in their own States was not changed. 

Despite the amendment, the desirability of a previous ar- 
rangement, generally understood, in regard to the fittest candi- 
date was still obvious. Otherwise, the electors voted in the 
dark, practically threw the State's vote away, and permitted 
the few States who would go to the trouble of a previous 
agreement to elect any candidate they chose, without giving 
the rest even a chance to vote against him. The right to de- 
feat a certain candidate was soon seen to be as significant, 
and perhaps of more practical importance, than the right to 
select the man really preferred. It had been the habit in the 
various States from the earliest times to nominate candidates 
for executive positions in a caucus, composed of the members 
of the legislature, which met for the purpose after the regu- 
lar session was over. The voters in the towns and counties 
could not spare the time to come to the capital and found it 
much more satisfactory to vote for or against certain men, 
whom their representatives from the legislative caucus told 
them were being voted on elsewhere, than it was to vote at 
random. This flourishing institution, the caucus, long famil- 
iar to all the members of the first Federal congresses, was at 
once employed to solve the self-same difficulty, and to its de- 
liberations we owe the choice of ]\Iadison and IMonroe. The 
electors were not compelled to vote for the caucus candidate ; 
but it was safer, for he invariably received enough votes to 
elect. Other candidates were frequently put into the field, 
men of excellent character but not widely enough knowTi to 
cause that sort of unanimous decision as to their fitness which 
had been responsible for the choice of Washington and Jeffer- 
son. Indeed, by 1820, it was seen that no candidate, how- 
ever admirable, would stand any chance in opposition to the 
caucus candidate without the same definite previous agree- 
ment, scrupulously observed, to vote for him in enough States 
to command a majority in the electoral college. The congres- 



232 THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 

sional caucus had been invoked to prevent haphazard voting 
and had literally taken the choice of President away from 
the electors and put it into the very hands deemed most unfit 
by the framers of the Constitution, into the hands of the legis- 
lature. 

As each successive election more and more clearly demon- 
strated the power of the caucus and the fact that its nomina- 
tion was equivalent to election, the advantages which would 
result from its manipulation were appreciated by the less 
scrupulous. In 1820, Crawford, a politician of unsavory 
reputation and little ability, nearly secured the nomination, 
and the news thoroughly frightened and aroused the country. 
The fact that the people did not directly elect mattered little, 
for the electors had for years never used their prerogative 
of choice and had nearly always voted as directed by their 
constituents. The people were really robbed of their right 
to choose. 

To break the power of the caucus, to restore the right of 
selection to the people (a right which it had already been 
forgotten had been thought most undesirable by the framers 
of the Constitution), an attempt was begun in 1822 to ob- 
tain by previous announcement and hard work a sufficient 
consensus of opinion in favor of some one man to enable him 
to defeat the next candidate of the caucus. Clay was nomi- 
nated by the legislature of Kentucky two years before the 
election of 1824 and was soon only one of sixteen or more 
candidates, all nominated in a similar way, among whom 
Jackson was clearly most popular with the masses. The 
caucus, by this time thoroughly unpopular, was thinly at- 
tended in 1824 and nominated Crawford and Gallatin. Jack- 
son, Adams, and Clay had all been nominated independently 
by friends in most of the States and something like a real 
vote by the people on all the candidates for President took 
place. Jackson, Adams, Crawford, and Clay all received a 
considerable vote in the order named, but none had sufficient 
for a choice, and Congress was after all to choose between 
them. A great deal of excited discussion and the passing 



JACKSONIAN DEMOCRACY 233 

of promises between Adams and Clay finally made the former 
President. ]\Ir. Clay's adherents were strong in the House 
of Representatives and he was able to control enough votes 
to decide the matter in Adams's favor, with the understand- 
ing, faithfully observed by Adams, that Clay should become 
Secretary of State. The result was loudly denounced by 
Jackson's supporters; the people had been again defrauded. 
Jackson had received easily the largest popular vote and a 
plurality in the electoral college, and had been "robbed" of 
his rights by the ''corrupt deal" between Adams and Clay. 
War to the death was declared; the most elaborate arrange- 
ments yet made preceded the election of 1828 and Jackson 
was triumphantly swept into the presidential chair. 

While he received nearly double the number of votes in 
the electoral college that Adams did, the estimated popular 
vote showed something approaching equality, and the number 
of States in which the vote had been close was sufficient to 
give the opposition hope of reversing the result. The caucus 
was dead indeed, but it w^as even more apparent than ever 
that if the minority were to prevail or the majority maintain 
their position, both must organize even more carefully than 
before. The amount of labor involved in the method of 
nomination pursued in Jackson's case was so great that it 
seemed hardly likely to succeed again, and much more likely 
to reproduce the situation of 1824 and throw the election 
into the hands of Congress. The campaign of 1832, there- 
fore, saw in the field a new organization, nothing more nor 
less than a caucus or convention chosen by the people ex- 
pressly for the purpose of nominating a candidate and of 
formulating a policy. The name "National Republicans" 
was adopted, Henry Clay nominated for President, and the 
first party "platfonn" or policy announced. The Democrats 
promptly followed suit and by a similar convention nominated 
Jaclvson again. 

Thus originated the two great national parties, whose in- 
fluence has dominated Federal politics ever since and which 
are the most important part of the machinery designed by 



234 THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 

Jackson and his supporters to make effective the new demo- 
cratic maxim, the direct rule of the people. As Calhoun put 
it, "Let the people have the power directly." Needless to 
add, no idea had been further from the minds of the framers 
of the State and Federal constitutions. Colonial democ- 
racy had been a limited democracy where the fit acted for the 
unfit; it had favored indirect influence by the majority, and 
had allowed the people in Federal government even less actual 
participation than in State government, restricting their 
share to the choice of the presidential electors, of representa- 
tives, and of the State legislatures which elected the sena- 
tors. Indeed, the electors had been by no means infrequently 
chosen by the legislatures prior to the Jacksonian regime. 
Jackson proclaimed the right of the people to direct influence 
in local. State, and Federal government and, whether or not 
as a direct result of his campaign, certainly universal man- 
hood suffrage became the slogan in the States, and of course 
the States, having in their hands the provisions for the Fed- 
eral suffrage, promptly projected manhood suffrage into Fed- 
eral politics. 

Herein Jacksonian democracy differed from Jeffersonian 
democracy. Jeffersonian democracy had laid stress upon the 
proper scope of central government, upon the proper in- 
terpretation of the Constitution, upon the relation of the in- 
dividual to the central government rather than upon the 
definition of ' ' the people. ' ' On the whole, its august founder 
had been content with the limitations upon the suffrage com- 
mon at the time and had felt that local and State govern- 
ments were in their existing condition almost ideal. He had 
been concerned with guarding the individual from the new 
colossus. Federal government, had been anxious to limit its 
province as much as possible, with the idea that the less di- 
rection the individual received from without, the better; the 
freer he could be from all interference beyond what other 
individuals had a right to exert by an appeal to the judiciary, 
the better it would be for him and for the community. 
Could the strict interpretation of constitutions and laws be- 



JACKSONIAN DEMOCRACY 235 

come an actuality, all desirable results would follow. That 
elaborate machinery would be necessary to enable the people 
even formally to participate in elections and to influence the 
policy of the State, he declined to believe. After all, 
it must be remembered that the form of Jeffersonian democ- 
racy was largely due to the fact that it was a reaction from 
the Hamiltonian notion of a strong centralized administra- 
tion which should effectively correlate and direct the energies 
of the individuals who composed the community. 

Similarly, Jacksonian democracy was a revolt against the 
machinery which had been developed to express a decision 
for the people. The people could act directly, must act di- 
rectly, and needed no mediator. It was not Jackson, how- 
ever, so much as Webster who gave the idea immediate cur- 
rency and stability by showing a delighted and astonished 
public that their own Constitution vested in the people, in 
the new Jacksonian sense, the ultimate power of decision. 
"It is. Sir," said Webster in that famous reply to Hayne of 
1830, "the people's Constitution, the people's government, 
made for the people, made by the people, and answerable to 
the people." Upon Hayne, he cast the stigma of maintain- 
ing a notion repugnant to democracy, that the States and not 
the people were sovereign. The subtleties of Hayne 's doc- 
trine he brushed aside ; its historical defense he ignored with 
magnificent assurance, conscious that for the first time the 
American people would see that States' rights was in essence 
undemocratic and contrary to the notion of the supremacy of 
the people as individuals. That it was also an anti-national 
doctrine, he declared with eloquence, but this the people did 
not as yet grasp. It is this reading of the new Jacksonian 
democracy into the Constitution, the realization of what the 
words of the document actually said, the failure to know that 
he was not using the words "the people" in the sense com- 
mon in 1789, that made Webster's 1830 speech a landmark 
in our constitutional history. 

States' sovereignty was undemocratic! The notion so com- 
pletely harmonized with the interests and desires of the New 



236 THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 

Englanders that it was caught up at once and became the 
basis of their political thinking. Behind the ideal of na- 
tionalism, Webster had definitely placed Jacksonian democ- 
racy and a reading of the Constitution whose cogency and 
accuracy it was impossible to deny. Historical evidence, quo- 
tations from the fathers, all were and always will be futile 
against Webster's dramatic, eloquent reading of the words 
of the document. Moreover, Webster made the word 
''union" synonymous with nationalism, and made national- 
ism equivalent to strong central government, all of which he 
asserted was provided by this same democratic Constitution. 
Yet the idea of union was less potent in causing the popu- 
larity of the speech than the proof that the Constitution it- 
self already contained the idea of democracy and popular 
rights, the proof that Jackson was right and the caucus 
wrong. Jefferson had been able to show the anti-nationalists 
that the Constitution could be read in their sense and that the 
grant of power did not necessarily presume its abuse or even 
its use. It had remained for Jackson and Webster to prove 
that the Constitution explicitly enthroned radical democracy : 
— that the interpretation of the document and of the powers 
granted by it rested not with the States or with the Federal 
officials but with the electorate. 

Along with this fundamental change in the notion of who 
were the people went the development of legislative, admin- 
istrative, and judicial forms and traditions. The House of 
Representatives was soon after 1789 forced by the exigencies 
of the situation to develop the committee system, the rules 
for restricting debate, and the enormous power of the 
Speaker, which really to-day have taken from the House it- 
self the power of legislation. As the Constitution was the 
work of Madison and Wilson, as the executive departments 
were the creation of Hamilton, so the machinery by which 
legislation is actually made in the House was distinctly the 
work of Henry Clay. In the Speakership, the Rules of the 
House, and the Committee System, Clay has left an endur- 
ing mark upon our national institutions. He made the 



JACKSONIAN DEMOCRACY 237 

Speaker of the House more powerful than the President and 
raised that office to a height it has never lost. By 1830, too, 
the transfer of the preponderance of legislative power from 
the House to the Senate, which has made the latter what it is 
to-day, the balance wheel of our legislative fabric, was well 
under way. 

The real Constitution of the United States by which we 
live was largely written by Chief Justice Marshall during 
his long term of office from 1801 to 1835. The interpre- 
tation of the broad phrases and inclusive wording intention- 
ally placed in the document by the framers to enable it to 
be adapted to the exigencies of times and occasions was a 
difficult task under any conditions. It was essential that 
something more than a few specific decisions should be made ; 
the general rules for the consistent interpretation of the 
document under all conditions had to be developed, tested, 
and applied to a sufficient variety of cases to provide the 
country with the definite body of constitutional precedents 
which alone could give the individual that degree of personal 
and civil liberty the Constitution guaranteed him. In par- 
ticular the clause concerning the powers of Congress required 
most careful treatment. It was at once obvious that only a 
tithe of the powers which Congress must actually exercise 
had been enumerated and that only a liberal interpretation 
of these clauses would permit the Federal government to legis- 
late outside a very narrow range indeed. Jefferson and 
IMadison had declared for the strictest possible construction 
and the unconstitutionality of every power not explicitly 
granted. Marshall, however, as Chief Justice, possessed an 
authority to interpret the Constitution which was denied 
the President, and the Constitution itself made his decisions 
binding law. To him we owe the doctrine of implied powers 
which permits Congress to legislate upon all subjects "neces- 
sary and proper" for compassing the ends for which the 
Federal government was instituted. Under this aegis the 
most important work of the Federal government has been 
done. The decisions of Marshall are actually as much a part 



238 THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 

of the law considered binding in the United States as if they 
had been solemnly adopted by the Constitutional Convention 
in 1787. 

The movement for the extension of the direct control of the 
people spread with extraordinary rapidity in the decades fol- 
lowing the election of Jackson. In the States, manhood suf- 
frage was generally adopted; the appointment of executive 
officers pretty thoroughly abandoned in favor of election for 
short terms; the terms of legislators generally reduced in 
length; and the separation of powers, long since adopted in 
theory, actually instituted in practice. Scarcely were these 
changes completed than the first of the great waves of immi- 
gration reached the eastern States and created new condi- 
tions in State and especially in city government. Soon the 
registration laws and laws fixing the qualifications for voters 
were being altered to admit these newly arrived members as 
citizens after shorter and shorter periods of actual residence, 
until, by the outbreak of the Civil War, boss rule, with its 
accompanying graft and corruption, had become thoroughly 
established in State, municipal, and local government in most 
parts of the country. 

In Federal government, a new rule concerning executive 
officials had been instituted by Jackson, patterned on Jef- 
ferson's half-hearted measures in the same direction. "To the 
victors belong the spoils" was the slogan of the army of office- 
seekers who stormed "Washington in 1829. There was no 
doubt a plausible defense: the chief executive must have 
around him ''friends of the people," who would execute his 
commands according to the spirit as well as the letter in which 
they had been given. Washington's and Adams's unsuccess- 
ful attempts to create a Cabinet from warring elements had 
early caused the general acceptance of the necessity of 
harmony in the immediate circle of the President; but Jack- 
son was the first actually to put into operation the principle 
of the "clean sweep" throughout the Federal offices. Thus 
the spoils system entered American politics and became speed- 
ily one of its best accepted maxims, whose literal fulfilment 



JACKSONIAN DEMOCRACY 239 

was invariably demanded by the impatient cohorts and rarely 
denied. 

The period between 1815 and 1840 was a great formative 
period when protective and compromise principles were 
adopted ; when legislative, judicial, and executive traditions 
assumed the form they still retain; when manhood suffrage, 
appointive officers, and city bosses were changing vitally the 
aspects of democracy as the earlier generations lived it. 
Lastly and by no means least, it had been a period in which 
the bud of national consciousness had been bursting into 
flower among the people themselves. A new nation was 
slowly evolving; and here and there an individual, seized 
with the consciousness of the great developments gradually 
unfolding, began to express in no doubtful tongue his notion 
of what that national spirit was and ought to be. Among 
those who influenced popular thinking, Daniel Webster again 
stands foremost with his great orations on the Pilgrims and 
on the Battle of Bunker Hill. He created a new conception 
of the colonial period and of the Revolution, national in its 
scope and expression, which was caught up into the school- 
books children were given to read and on which men who 
later fought in the Northern armies were nourished. Weems 
had already produced eulogistic biographies of Washington, 
Franklin, and other notables, whose ready sale showed the 
growing popular taste for literature glorifying the endeavors 
of the men who had been conspicuously nationalists, working 
not for a single State's welfare but obviously for the good of 
the whole country. By 1850, the literature of American his- 
tory had been further enriched by Irving 's dramatic tale of 
Columbus, by Bancroft's intensely "patriotic" and national- 
istic description of the history of America to the adoption of 
the Constitution. Sparks 's editions of the writings of the 
Revolutionary fathers were also intentionally prepared to in- 
culcate a love of the country as a whole and an admiration 
for the men who had worked for our union under one govern- 
ment as well as for our independence from England. The 
poets of New England, Lowell and Longfellow especially, gave 



240 THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 

voice to this growing sentiment of admiration for our national 
welfare. So far as the new country had any literature, it was 
written by Northern nationalists, a fact significant in explain- 
ing the strong sentiment in favor of nationalism in the North 
in 1860. 

Of an identity distinct from other races, the individual 
American became acutely conscious about 1830. Truth to 
tell, an idea that we were different from and better than 
other people was not unknown in colonial days and became 
common during the Revolution ; but it was then almost certain 
to reflect as much local pride and satisfaction as a sense of 
difference between Americans and Europeans. Until 1830, 
the feeling of a difference between Americans was still too 
keen to allow it to become apparent that the people of the 
whole coast had really begun to think of themselves as Ameri- 
cans rather than as inhabitants of certain States. "With this 
acute consciousness of racial difference came at first an 
arrogance and a conceit which we find only too faithfully re- 
flected in the pages of travelers. The American insisted upon 
the instantaneous recognition of the superiority of his coun- 
try, and its institutions, literature, and culture, over all 
other countries and their qualities and graces. Crude, rough, 
ill-mannered as this spirit seemed to the sensitive Dickens, it 
is nevertheless to the historian unmistakable evidence of the 
dawning of a truly national consciousness, of the disappear- 
ance of the harsh lines which had kept the people so sepa- 
rated from one another throughout the colonial period. To 
be sure, nothing like definitive agreement or a consensus of 
opinion on any subject had been attained, except on the one 
fact that America was different from and therefore better 
than Europe; and until a clear consensus of opinion should 
reach a point at which the community as a whole became con- 
scious that it existed, until it was no longer a matter of ideal- 
ism but a plain inevitable fact, no nation, in the modern or- 
ganic sense of the word, could or would exist. Still, all-un- 
conscious, the nation had begun to try to think, act, and be- 
lieve. 



XVIII 

THE TWO DIVERGING SECTIONS 

The economic forces in operation in 1830, whicli were swiftly- 
producing south of Mason and Dixon's line and of the Ohio 
River conditions more and more widely divergent from those 
north of it, are all connoted by the single word — cotton. 
And cotton connotes slavery. In 1789 neither cotton nor 
slavery were factors of prime consequence ; in 1815 both were 
clearly of growing importance and were seen to be potentially 
capable of great extension. By 1830, the increasing demand 
for cotton, the ease with which the South had been able to 
meet it, the astonishing profits, proved to the dullest minds 
that in cotton the United States had at last found the medium 
of exchange with Europe which it had so long lacked, and 
which with every decade was becoming more and more ade- 
quate. Indeed, many and many an excited planter and New 
England merchant saw in cotton the means of freeing the 
country from its long economic dependence upon Europe. 
They were ready to teach their children, in the words of De 
Bow, "to hold the cotton plant in one hand and the sword in 
the other, ever ready to defend it as the source of commercial 
power abroad and through that of independence at home." 

The most obvious result of the cotton-culture had been to 
render slavery extremely profitable and to put an end to the 
talk at the South of the desirability of its abolition which had 
been so common in Virginia and in South Carolina between 
1815 and 1825. The vast increase in the cotton crop — from 
about four hundred fifty thousand bales in 1816 to one million 
bales in 1826, over eighty per cent of which was promptly 
exported— of course greatly increased the exports of the 
United States and facilitated exchange with Europe. In- 

241 



242 THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 

deed, in the palmiest days of the old pre-revolutionary smug- 
gling-trade, the ease and profitableness of trade with Europe 
had never been so great. The loss of the West Indian trade be- 
came each year of less consequence, and, as the country devel- 
oped, it became clearer and clearer to Americans that the West 
India market, even if it had continued open to them, would 
have been inadequate to consume the whole swelling volume 
of produce. Thankfully, they realized their deliverance when 
the abolition of slavery by England in 1833 ruined her West 
India sugar plantations and hence destroyed at one blow the 
original source of the conunercial prosperity of the Atlantic 
coast. The problem of our relations to the West Indies had 
solved itself. There was now no recourse save cotton. 

The cotton-culture had also trebled the value of land and 
of slaves at the South. It was a method of cultivation pe- 
culiarly adopted to the use of slave labor. The stalks of the 
previous year's crop were first broken down; the field was 
then laid off into beds by plowing a furrow between the old 
rows and lapping on it from four to six other furrows, thus 
leaving the field in ridges about four feet apart. After the 
earth had been pulverized with a small harrow, and the 
center of the ridge split with a plow, negro women sowed 
cotton seed in the trench at the rate of about two bushels 
per acre and the trench was closed by dragging a sort of 
scraper over it. The young plants were thinned out with a 
hoe, a laborious task, so as to leave two plants about a foot 
apart, and, until the crop was ready to pick, the ground was 
constantly hoed or stirred every twenty days. Picking, a 
long and tedious rather than laborious occupation, consumed 
months, and when it was over the field gang began to break 
stalks and plow again the old field or to clear new fields of 
weeds and underbrush. The simplicity of the work, the small 
number and rudimentary character of the tools needed, the 
constant but not exhausting labor all the year round, the 
profitableness of organizing labor on a large scale and of 
performing simultaneously the same task by great gangs of 
slaves, all made the cotton-culture ideally fitted for the use 



THE TWO DIVEKGING SECTIONS 243 

of forced labor. The expense of maintaining slaves in com- 
parative comfort was small in a warm climate where housing, 
fuel, and heavy clothing were not essential, and where the 
vegetable food abundantly provided by nature formed an 
important part of the negroes' diet. 

Cotton, however, rapidly exhausted the land, and even vir- 
gin soil after two or three years' cropping yielded a per- 
ceptibly smaller return. Since manure and fertilizers were 
expensive and little understood and since new land was plenti- 
ful, it became customary to abandon a field after a few years 
and move the gang of slaves to a new scene of operations. 
From this grew a tendency towards large plantations of thou- 
sands of acres where several shifts of operations could be 
made on the owner's territory, without leaving the general 
neighborhood, and then permit a return to the first field, 
which would have lain fallow long enough to recover its fer- 
tility. The profits, too, were indubitably greater from farm- 
ing on a large scale and great gangs of slaves owned by com- 
paratively few men were soon producing the bulk of the cot- 
ton crop. 

The extraordinary profit in cultivating the richest bottom 
lands compared to the more moderate returns from cropping 
the uplands promptly sent the more adventurous and am- 
bitious into new districts and caused the rapid growth after 
1830 of the territory along the Gulf of Mexico. A very large 
superficial area was at once occupied: the land sales in the 
five Gulf States in 1834 aggregated nearly three million acres ; 
and in both 1835 and 1836, over five million acres. The rush 
of capital to the district was equally marked; the number of 
slaves OAMied there increased 86% in the decade after 1830, 
while the production of cotton increased 163%. 

From this expansion flowed results of consequence. The 
preponderance of slaves and of wealth shifted from the At- 
lantic coast to the Gulf States. In 1790, jMaryland and Vir- 
ginia had owned three-fifths of all the slaves in the country; 
by 1840 about two-thirds of the slaves had migrated to the 
Gulf States, and one-half of the total number were absolutely 



244 THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 

dependent on the cotton-culture. By 1850, nearly 80% of the 
total number of slaves were in the cotton States. The value 
of a good field-hand had risen from $200 in 1778 to $600 in 
1836. Indeed, compared to cotton, tobacco, the staple crop of 
Virginia and Kentucky, was not profitable enough to re- 
tain the slaves in the district, while in Tennessee and Mis- 
souri the profit of using slaves for agriculture was in no way 
comparable to that of selling them to the cotton-planters. 
Practically, the enormous success of the cotton-culture in the 
Gulf States and the consequent high price of slaves made it 
more profitable for the border States to breed slaves for the 
Southern fields than to cultivate any crop themselves. * ' Vir- 
ginia is, in fact," wrote a Southern professor in 1830, "a 
negro-raising State for other States." Cotton thus not only 
perpetuated slavery in the cotton-belt where the slaves could 
be profitably used for the actual production of the staple; 
but it perpetuated it in the border States where it made the 
slave himself a marketable and valuable commodity. "It is 
believed," said Henry Clay in 1829, "that nowhere in the 
farming portion of the United States, would slave labor be 
generally employed, if the proprietor were not tempted to 
raise slaves by the high price of the Southern markets which 
keeps it up in his own." 

Certainly, too, the cotton-culture made the South essen- 
tially agricultural and essentially an agricultural community 
of one crop. As years went on, the amount of food raised 
proportionately declined, the amount of manufactured goods, 
even under the most liberal interpretation of that term, was 
so very small that the cotton States practically depended on 
the North, the West, or Europe for literally everything neces- 
sary for life. Other industry than cotton-culture and all sorts 
of manufactures were dwarfed, discouraged, or prevented from 
developing. Where in 1810 the total value of manufactured 
goods south of Mason and Dixon 's line compared to their value 
north of that line had been about one-half, it was by 1840 only 
one-third, and had sunk by 1850 to one-fifth. Some growth 
there was, but relatively to the growth of manufactures at the 



THE TWO DIVERGING SECTIONS 245 

North, the South suffered an actual decline. The two sections 
were developing in different directions and certainly those 
geographical and geological conditions, which made the cotton- 
culture so profitable in the South and which forced the North 
into manufacturing and varied industry, are mainly re- 
sponsible for the contrast which plainly existed between them 
in 1860. 

A Southern historian has made a careful study of the con- 
dition of Alabama in 1850. Out of 750,000 people, there were 
330,000 slaves, owned by 30,000 men, that is, by about seven 
per cent of the white population. About three-fourths of 
the total number of slaves, with nearly that same proportion 
of the land, were owned by less than 10,000 white men, from 
whose plantations came the great bulk of the cotton crop. 
The profits can be guessed from the fact that the exports of 
the State were valued at ten million dollars annually while 
the imports were under a million. To New England and to 
Europe, the State sent cotton; from the Northwest via the 
Mississippi and the Gulf she drew bread and meat. Some 
75,000 whites and as many negroes derived a livelihood from 
manufactures, banking, and the professions. Until just be- 
fore the Civil War there was no attempt at an organized 
public-school system. Alabama was a State of small towns 
and villages, of scattered plantations, with no large cities 
and little if any community life in the broadest sense. The 
figures given by the census of 1850 for the South as a whole 
prove these conditions typical. There were 347,525 slave- 
holders in the South, and something over three millions of 
slaves. ' ' Of the large planters owning more than fifty slaves, 
whose elegance, luxury, and hospitality are recited in tales of 
travelers, over whose estates and lives has shone the luster of 
romance and poetry, there were less than eight thousand." 

So striking and important a change in the aspect of 
slavery, in its geographical extent and its economic position, 
naturally provoked both North and South a vigorous and 
eager discussion of its cause, its methods, its morals, its ex- 
pediency, and its justifiability. Societies for the abolition of 



246 THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 

slavery or for its limitation were old in America, had been 
common both North and South in the decade following 1789 
and in that following the commercial depression of 1816 ; but 
the vital changes in the position and importance of slavery, 
together with the general intellectual ferment which produced 
as dissimilar movements as the Sunday-school, the Mormon 
church, temperance and women's rights societies, roused a 
section of the Northern people to agitate against slavery and 
led to the formation of a new type of Abolition and Anti- 
slavery societies by a new group of leaders, of whom the most 
remarkable were Garrison, Parker, and Phillips. Their 
propaganda, which seems to modern investigators to have 
contributed little to the outbreak of the "War in 1861, did 
cause a searching of consciences and in particular of history, 
the Scriptures, and the census. What was the economic 
status of slavery; was it profitable; was it fair, equitable, 
just, ethical, moral; was it cruel, was it as good for the slave 
as for the master? The discussion was carried on by both 
parties with a furious intensity, with the uncritical use of so- 
called ''facts," and with that sentiment and prejudice which 
are so certain to accompany the political discussion of any 
moral issue. 

While it is hardly profitable to-day to consider the detailed 
arguments advanced by either side, it may be briefly pointed 
out that the chief difference seems to have lain in the fact 
that the Southerners lived with the negro and treated slavery 
as an essentially practical economic question, while the North- 
ern men, by reason of their lack of actual contact with 
slavery, were able to look upon it with a certain detachment 
and to apply to its difficulties moral and ethical theories 
drawn chiefly from their own widely different practical ex- 
perience. The planter believed that cotton could not be 
grown without negroes and knew that history as well as the 
Scriptures provided no other solution of the problem raised 
by the juxtaposition of a superior and an inferior race ex- 
cept slavery. If any individuals then alive were to blame for 
the existence of slavery at the South, he felt some share of the 



THE TWO DIVERGING SECTIONS 247 

blame ought to be borne by the New Englanders whose for- 
tunes had originally been based on the rum, molasses, and 
slave-trade during the colonial times. That cruel treatment 
of slaves occurred, he was willing to admit, but he claimed 
that on the whole slavery at the South in 1850 was as humane 
and considerate as it had ever been anywhere. Northern 
opinion more and more came to lay stress upon the moral and 
ethical issue, upon the claim that any slavery anywhere was 
of itself wrong, inhuman, and cruel. It pointed out that the 
trend of human development had been clearly toward the 
emancipation of the individual, and that the enlightened 
opinion of "Western Europe in 1850 regarded the institution 
with abhorrence and had everywhere abolished it. Both 
sides employed many other arguments and illustrations whose 
truth was stoutly challenged by their opponents. 

The trouble about the argument was that the truth on one 
side did not offset or answer the truth on the other. The 
Southerner, quoting history and the Scriptures, declined to 
listen to what he was told was the moral sense of the world. 
Nor was the claim that slavery in the South was in general 
humane and that no individuals then alive were in any way 
to blame for its existence, at all satisfactory to the excited 
Abolitionists who declaimed against it as a wrong in itself, 
whose very existence proved it wrong. After the dark days 
of the Reconstruction, it is hard to convince many sincere 
men that most negroes were not happier and better cared 
for under slavery than they have been since under freedom. 
In fact, the South raised the issue of expediency : how could 
we or can we do otherwise. The real difficulty was the ex- 
istence of millions whose actual ignorance and incapacity 
made them economic slaves, literally unable to care for them- 
selves, and not to be made capable and industrious by fiat. 
To this the Northern men replied that slavery simply meant 
the perpetuation of this situation by making it legally, eco- 
nomically, and socially impossible for the children to rise 
above the position their fathers and grandfathers had occu- 
pied. It was the clash between present and future expe- 



248 THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 

diency, a choice between the probable evils of emancipation 
with which men then alive must cope, or the postponement 
of the remedy for the evils of slavery to a future time. If 
we confine ourselves strictly to the point of view of 1850, we 
shall be likely to agree that humane, sensible, honest men 
might find much that seemed cogent and convincing in either 
argument and be able consistently to espouse that side with 
ardor. 

Meanwhile, north of Mason and Dixon's line and of the 
Ohio River, in the districts popularly known as the North 
and the West, an extremely different type of social eco- 
nomic structure was growing apace. Even before the Revo- 
lution, a difference in development between the North and 
South had been remarked by casual travelers, and by the 
inauguration of Jackson the contrast was striking; but 
the following decades saw a truly stupendous growth 
in the North of diversified industry and in the "West 
of more intensive scientific agriculture, whose reaction 
upon the social and political life of the community was ex- 
ceedingly significant. It was not so much an increase in the 
output of Northern factories and Western farms which at- 
tracted attention, though the doubling of the wheat and corn 
crops and of the production of raw iron and the trebling of 
the value of manufactured woolens and cottons were suffi- 
ciently interesting facts. The normally rapid increase of the 
population, plus steady immigration, necessarily meant the ap- 
plication of more hands to the soil, enormous sales of land, 
more acres under actual cultivation, and hence ensured a great 
increase in total production. The remarkable fact was the 
undoubted gain in efficiency, the proportionally greater return 
from the investment of capital and labor than ever before; 
the increasing variety of the output; the rapid rise of new 
industries, and the steady development of a home market for 
home products as well as the manufacture of domestic prod- 
ucts to supply the home demand. The North was not only 
gaining on the South from the more rapid natural increase 
of the white population ; it was gaining immensely by immigra- 



THE TWO DIVERGING SECTIONS 249 

tion year by year, especially after 1850; and it was utilizing 
more of its natural resources more skilfully and adequately 
than was the South. 

This new efficiency was largely due to improved methods and 
to the invention of new machinery to perform the manual labor 
for which it was impossible to procure hands enough on the 
"Western farms. The cast-iron plow, the mowing-machine, 
the horse-rake, the reaping- and threshing-machines, the horse- 
cultivators and seed-sowers, all of which were in use by 1840 
and all of which had by 1850 become practically universal in 
the West, were enabling a few men to do the work of a hundred 
hand laborers. And the North found that the increased output 
of raw iron, the better pig iron produced by the new process 
of smelting with anthracite coal provided the material out of 
which busy hands in Northern factories could form the ma- 
chines needed by the West. Then, too, as the years passed, 
improvements upon the old spinning- and weaving-machinery, 
the sewing-machine, changes in factory organization, cheaper 
machines due to cheaper iron and cheaper transportation, in- 
creased the proportionate output from the factories and re- 
duced the cost of production. 

]\Iore people to be reached, living on a constantly greater area 
of land ; more produce to be moved, more markets demanding 
it, required and secured a tremendous improvement in the 
facilities of transportation. In 1825, the Erie Canal connected 
the Great Lakes with the Mohawk and the Hudson Rivers, and 
was soon linked to a network of canals through the low water- 
shed separating the Ohio River system from the Lake system. 
By 1840 grain traveled a thousand miles to the Eastern States 
more cheaply and expeditiously than it could have been moved 
a hundred miles a decade earlier. A vast acreage of land 
hitherto inacessible became available and to it flocked the am- 
bitious. Soon canal lines were supplanted by the rapid growth 
after 1840 of railroad trunk lines which made transportation 
of all bulky goods still cheaper and greatly fostered the rapid 
development of diversified industry. Cheap iron of constantly 
better grade made possible better engines, larger cars, stronger 



250 THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 

rails, and enabled the railroads to haul longer trains of larger 
ears, each with heavier loads, in less time at constantly dimin- 
ishing cost. As transportation became cheaper, districts were 
able to send grain to market which had never before been able 
to compete and were consequently able to afford manufactured 
goods for the first time. The increased supply of food enabled 
men in the East hitherto dependent on local supply to abandon 
the farm for the factory and produce the articles the West 
demanded. Yet, as food and clothes grew cheaper because of 
the improved process and the development of transportation, 
the profit to the individual seemed to increase on each trans- 
action, and the bushel of corn bought more manufactured 
articles, and strange to say a yard of cloth or a pig of iron 
bought more corn. It was as if some magician had waved 
his wand and bade them all make one another rich. 

As the economic fabric grew in size, it developed in strength 
and complexity. Corporations of all sorts were f oi-med ; by 
1860 a goodly number of labor unions attempting organi- 
zation on a national scale had appeared. Particularly evi- 
dent and gratifying were the increasing number of banks, the 
swelling volume of deposits, and the extension of credit facil- 
ities in the East. The amount of capital seeking invest- 
ment had never been so great and proved the unquestioned 
soundness of the country's development. Exchange through 
London for trade between the States was long obsolete, and 
the banking centers were really capable of handling all do- 
mestic business transactions. The complexity of the eco- 
nomic life of the North, the proportion of skilled workmen, 
the variety of industries, as well as the stability of the 
credit structure, were to be of the utmost consequence in 
the waging of the Civil War. Most significant of all, the 
new development depended upon cooperation and was profit- 
able in proportion to the efficiency of that collective effort. 
This the North clearly saw. In the South, on the other 
hand, the individual was still isolated and was either un- 
conscious of the greater possibilities of a more complex social 
life or hindered by adverse conditions from developing them. 



THE TW^O DIVERGING SECTIONS 251 

In the social structure, too, occurred striking changes be- 
tween 1840 and 1860, utterly transforming the aspect of 
Northern society. The population not only doubled but was 
able to remain practically upon the same area which had 
supported the previous generation. In earlier decades, no 
more people could live together in a town or city than the 
district could support, unless the ease of water transportation 
and the nearness of a great source of supply enabled them 
to import their food. But as the efficiency of the new farm- 
ing by machinery enabled a part to feed the whole, and as 
the efficiency of the new factories made the labor of a part 
sufficient to clothe the whole, a larger proportion of the com- 
munity than ever before was free to live where it pleased 
and could rely upon the railroads to supply its wants. Thus 
was made possible a new type of social unit, the modern 
industrial city, devoted perhaps to the production of a few 
articles and relying upon the outside world for all else. 
Concomitantly, the cheapness of wood with which to build 
houses, of coal to heat them, of gas to light them, of sewers 
to drain them, of water-works to supply fresh water, made 
the rapid growth of cities possible and freed these hundreds 
of thousands of people, huddled upon the same spot, from 
the old menaces of the plague and the scurvy. The com- 
munity had time to build cities and public works, and to 
supply the multifold new economic wants which community 
life in cities promptly created. It was becoming wealthy, 
beginning to have traces of a leisure class, able to afford 
systematically to develop its tastes in a variety of directions 
not essential to existence but imperative for culture and 
education. Theaters, magazines, books multiplied; the opera 
and concerts became popular. Education received more care- 
ful attention and a considerable part of the swelling profits 
were wisely invested in school buildings and equipment, and 
the children could be, and were, left longer in school than 
ever before. For those adults whose early opportunities had 
not been great, the lyceum and the lecture courses provided 
a variety of informing and instructive material. 



252 THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 

In the Mississippi and Ohio Valleys, the gain in population 
and wealth was proportionately more rapid than in the North, 
and for the first time a truly complex social structure began 
to develop west of the mountains. Naturally, it centered 
round the lines of communication with the East ; along the 
great highway from New York through the Hudson and 
Mohawk Valleys, along the shore of the Lakes to "the North- 
west," as the States northwest of Chicago were then called. 
Naturally, it was most striking at the various gateways and 
termini. New York, Albany, Buffalo, the Lake cities, Chicago. 
New York and Chicago, the eastern and western termini of 
the railroad trunk lines, of course benefited most. The older 
centers in the West, Cincinnati and St. Louis, had owed their 
prominence to their control of the river routes to the South 
and were therefore outside the new field of development. A 
shift in the balance of population and wealth took place be- 
tween the North and West, much to the advantage of the 
West as a whole, and with it came a concomitant shift of 
the balance of population and wealth in the West from the 
Mississippi and Ohio River system to the Great Lakes and 
the upper Mississippi. And Henry Clay had predicted in 
1824 that Zanesville, Ohio, would become the emporium of 
the West! 

Why the only sectional line in American history, which 
ever threatened to become permanent, should have begun with 
the old boundary line run by Mason and Dixon between Mary- 
land and Pennsylvania and have continued along the Ohio 
River and then have passed northwest through Missouri is 
one of the most fascinating questions of American history, 
and probably does not admit of a wholly determinate an- 
swer. 

It is, however, a remarkable and suggestive fact that the 
southern line of the great ice sheet, which at one time oc- 
cupied the whole northern half of this continent followed 
very nearly Mason and Dixon's line, then followed the Ohio 
River for half its course, passed across Indiana and Illinois 
leaving a sizable section south of it (where "before the 



THE TWO DIVERGING SECTIONS 253 

War" many slaves hired from Kentucky were at work and 
which were pro-slavery districts in most elections), and then 
turned sharply towards the northwest, leaving most of Mis- 
souri to the south of it. The result of the existence of this 
great ice sheet and of its melting was to create north of 
this line a soil richer in chemical elements and hence more 
fertile than that south of it. Much land south of this line 
is still ''dead soil" and only in the river bottoms, filled with 
silt brought by the Mississippi from the upper valley, is 
the soil extremely fertile. The southern half of the United 
States is not capable of the same variety of crops as the 
northern. Closely following this same line of the ice sheet 
is the isotherm of an average annual temperature of 60 
degrees, the belt just north averaging 50 to 60 degrees, and 
that just south, 60 to 70 degrees. But the peculiarity of 
America is that while the lines of winter temperature slope 
southward and give the country between the Great Lakes 
and the Gulf the range of temperature found in Europe 
between the North Cape and the Sahara Desert, the summer 
lines expand in both directions and produce greater extremes 
of temperature in the northern half than in the southern 
half or in European countries of the same latitude. The 
temperature of the northern belt, like its soil, is far more 
varied than that of the southern half, where only those crops 
can be profitably grown that will thrive in a summer temper- 
ature of 80 degrees and above. In addition, the average 
annual rainfall, so important to agriculture, is from 20 to 
40 inches in the belt just north of the line of the ice sheet, 
and from 40 to 60 inches in the whole district south of it. 
IMore than 60 degrees annual temperature and more than 
40 inches of rainfall is fatal to the profitable cultivation of 
many agricultural products, and it is in the belt just north 
of Mason and Dixon's line and of the Ohio River, that soil, 
temperature, and rainfall create the most favorable con- 
ditions for agriculture. Consequently, the bulk of the most 
highly developed land, and nearly all the wheat and corn 
land will be found to-day, as in 1860, north of the line. 



254 THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 

Soil, temperature, and rainfall prevent the growth of wheat 
and corn at a profit in the South and do not permit the rais- 
ing in the North of staple crops like cotton, tobacco, rice, 
and indigo, which can be profitably grown with slave labor. 
The North was prevented by Nature, not by the superior 
moral and ethical fiber of its people, from developing slavery 
as an institution. These conditions were true in 1606 ; they 
are still true in 1914: they are fundamental conditions which 
have shaped and always will shape economic and institutional 
life in this country. 

One more fact is of consequence. As the great sheet of 
ice melted, the Ohio and Missouri Rivers were formed by 
the streams flowing along its edges into the cleft of the 
valley ; there they united with the Mississippi, cutting a deep 
channel between the low hills to the Gulf of Mexico. They 
flowed, however, through a vast plain whose angle of in- 
clination was small, and, except at times of flood, their prog- 
ress was leisurely and wandering. In this country there 
would be little water-power for manufacturing. On the other 
hand, the mountains and rocl^y northern country created 
swift rivers with many falls and rapids. All through New 
York and New England the streams hurrying down the steep 
hillsides and draining great mountain valleys made possible 
the water-power upon which the early factories depended. 
The use of steam as the chief motive power in manufactur- 
ing is very recent, and is wholly dependent upon coal as a 
fuel. The water-power in the rivers enabled the north to 
develop industries. The same rocky soil and mountainous 
formation that made the rivers numerous and swift made 
agriculture on a large scale difficult and unprofitable and 
influenced the inhabitants to follow other occupations. The 
climatic and geographical conditions, far more than inherited 
tendencies or natural ambition, explain the rapid develop- 
ment of manufactures in the North in the half -century pre- 
ceding the Civil War. The lack of water-power and the 
profitableness of great staple crops made the South pre- 
dominantly an agricultural country. 



THE TWO DIVERGING SECTIONS 255 

Similarly the geographical and economic fabric influenced 
decisively the political institutions of each section. The cold 
winters in the North made agriculture impossible for many 
months, necessitated the storing up of provisions and led 
the people living inland to huddle together for company, 
for sharing the food and fuel in time of scarcity, and for 
defense against the Indians and French. The shipping and 
fishing industries similarly encouraged the formation and 
growth of towns. These factors naturally explain the for- 
mation of closely knit cooperative centralized institutions in 
the North; it was convenient and expedient so to live. In 
the South, it was as clearly convenient and expedient to 
live otherwise. Tobacco in colonial times, like cotton after 
the Revolution, required vast areas of new land, for the 
crops quickly exhausted the soil and the science of fertili- 
zation was not then understood. Each planter owned, there- 
fore, a tract equivalent to a whole New England town- 
ship, in the middle of which he usually lived with a few 
white overseers and a large gang of slaves. He tilled only 
a part of his estate each year and was constantly moving 
from one field to another. Summer and winter were alike 
to him so far as food, shelter, and communication went; 
there was nothing to make him dependent on other planters, 
or to make close political association necessary. The great 
plantations were therefore organized into counties in the 
loosest fashion. The necessary functions of government were 
reduced to a minimum by the small number of whites and 
their comparative isolation. The common business was 
largel}' judicial or financial and could be performed with 
ease by one or two men. Only on the plantations was ex- 
tensive authority in daily use; the population which most 
needed to be controlled, tried, fined, and legislated about was 
not the planters but the slaves, and it was inevitable that 
nearly plenary authority should be vested in the master. 
Centralized control was a physical impossibility : each planter 
must govern his own plantation and receive from the county 
aid and assistance in cases of special difficulty. The State 







M 



■THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 

disputes between planters; it could not under- 
^rn the community for the planters. 
renty years following the adoption of the Consti- 
I'orth developed industry; the South, cotton; the 
Feame wholly free; the South chiefly slave. Where 
^]Slorth, something like centralized government was a 
ity and the object of cooperation was to secure a posi- 
^^^•^^esult, in the South the best government was, as Jeffer- 
rijd, the one which did the least, which interfered only 
.■'^*^^i^M-'Iast resort. States' rights had therefore for the 
therner a solid foundation in the experience of the com- 
'^i^xnity. The benefits of union, that is of cooperation, had 
^ to the Northern man an equally firm basis in experience. In 
.the North, free labor, diversified industry, seemed to be the 
very price of existence; in the South, great staple crops 
grown by slaves or at least by unfree labor seemed equally 
inevitable. To the Northern man slavery was an abstraction, 
an excrescence on the life of the community ; to the Southern 
man, it was as necessary as the soil. That in another part 
of the country the factors, accepted in each as axiomatic, 
not only did not exist but would have been positively det- 
rimental to the successful administration of public and 
private business, neither North or South fully realized. 

The Civil War was the result of a misunderstanding be- 
tween honest, sincere men, in which both were right and 
both were wrong, and, it is far truer to add, in which 
neither could be either right or wrong. Each did what the 
conditions of life seemed to make inevitable, what its tradi- 
tions sanctioned, and its ideals counseled. 






XIX 

TEXAS AND THE MEXICAN WAR > ,^ 

By 1835, the profits of cotton-culture were clear to the South- 
ern planters. Apparently the market was exhaustless; the 
amount of profit obtainable from the labor of slaves on 
virgin soil in the river bottoms was astounding; unless the 
land most profitable to cultivate should be exhausted, or 
the supply of slaves become insufficient to work it, there 
seemed literally to be no dreams of wealth and power which 
might not be realized. For the time being, the supply of 
land and of slaves was ample, but the rapidity with which 
the westward movement was progressing made the continu- 
ation of the same rate of growth improbable unless more land 
could be obtained than was available in 1835. That the same 
rate of growth must continue seemed to Southerners of the 
time an axiom whose truth was too apparent to be disputed 
by any fair-minded individual. To continue it, there must 
be more land and more slaves. 

The territory between the AUeghanies and the Mississippi 
was in 1835 already organized into States, the lands had 
been allotted to private individuals, and the status of slavery 
had been decided in a fashion which could not be altered. 
To the north of the Ohio lay the vast plains called the 
Northwest Territory, which had been organized by the famous 
Ordinance of 1787, with a prohibition of slavery in the terri- 
tories and States to be organized out of it. By 1819, Ohio, 
Indiana, and Illinois had been admitted as free States, and 
the type of soil, the rainfall, and the climate made it certain 
that the district was wholly unfitted for the growth of cot- 
ton. From every point of view, all the land north of the 
Ohio was unavailable. 

257 



258 THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 

The territory south of that river had been also ceded to the 
Confederation by England in the Treaty of 1783, but without 
a very definite agreement concerning the southern boundary. 
Kentucky and Tennessee had been settled from Virginia and 
North Carolina and had entered the Union as slave States in 
1792 and 1796 respectively. The ownership of a district 
roughly approximating the present States of Alabama and 
Mississippi was, however, in dispute between England and 
Spain, and the former agreed with the latter that if she could 
make good her claim against the United States, the land should 
be hers. Georgia also laid claim to the district by virtue of 
her colonial charter. The difficulty was finally settled by 
treaties in which the United States bought the Spanish claims 
to the whole southern part of the United States, including 
Florida. Mississippi and Alabama had already been settled 
by Americans and were indeed admitted as States before the 
Treaty of 1819 was finally ratified. Save Florida, there was 
no land left east of the Mississippi and south of the Ohio 
which slavery had not already formally occupied by 1820. 

There were, however, in the Gulf States great tracts of ex- 
ceedingly fertile lands in the hands of the powerful Indian 
confederacies of the Creeks, Cherokees, and Choctaws. After 
the breaking of solemn treaties and unseemly and undignified 
quarrels, which very nearly provoked armed defiance of Fed- 
eral authority by Georgia, the Indians were expelled from 
their rich fields, and by 1835 had been located in what are 
now Oklahoma and Indian Territory. Although the new area 
thus opened to cotton was large, it was so promptly occupied 
that before 1840, all the best cotton land south of the Ohio and 
east of the Mississippi had again been allotted. 

As early as 1819 when Missouri and Maine simultane- 
ously applied for admission, the status of the Louisiana 
Territory was seen to be an issue of the first importance. The 
southernmost part had become a slave State some years be- 
fore; it was natural that the district around the Missouri 
River whither the rich fur-trade had drawn settlers should out- 
strip the rest of Louisiana in growth and should be large 



TEXAS AND THE MEXICAN WAR 259 

enough for admission as a State when the rest of the pur- 
chase was scarcely settled at all. The Compromise of 1820 
admitted Missouri as a slave State, and, while prohibiting 
slavery in the broad plains north of Missouri's southern 
boundary line, 36° 30', obviously left the river-bottoms of 
Arkansas for future expansion. In 1820, the allotment to 
the Indians of land south of 36° 30' was not foreseen and 
the Southerners felt that they had amply provided for all the 
cotton land which could conceivably be needed for decades to 
come. In fostering this feeling, the prevailing dense igno- 
rance of western geography played a prominent part. The 
expedition of Lewis and Clark, sent by Jefferson to inspect 
the new purchase, and the accounts of trappers and hunters 
had given no accurate idea of how much land there was to 
which the United States could rightly lay claim west of the 
Mississippi. The general notion that it was practically un- 
limited was quite satisfactory to most men. But within 
fifteen years, Arkansas was demanding admission as a State ; 
the Indians had been assigned the rest of the Louisiana terri- 
tory west of Arkansas and south of the Missouri Compromise 
line; and the development of the cotton-culture west of the 
great river was clearly proceeding at so rapid a pace that the 
limitation of production and the diminution of the degree of 
profit hitherto obtained was certain unless new lands could 
be promptly secured. 

The obvious direction for such expansion was in the Gulf 
of Mexico, either in Cuba and the islands or in the vast do- 
main of Texas, contiguous with the cotton States, along the 
Gulf between the Sabine River and the Rio Grande. About 
this great estate, the United States had hitherto cared little ; 
it was included in the Louisiana Purchase, though the fact 
was not understood in 1803 ; it was therefore left outside the 
boundaries of the United States in the Treaty of 1819 with 
Spain, and the omission aroused little comment except in Mis- 
souri. Indeed, few supposed we had a just claim to it or that 
it was of any particular value. The efforts of the South 
American and Central American colonies of Spain to obtain 



260 THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 

their independence about 1821 excited much sympathy in the 
United States, evoked the Monroe Doctrine and practically 
their protection by the United States from European aggres- 
sion. With equal promptitude appeared arguments in favor 
of the annexation of one or more of them, especially of Cuba 
and Mexico, to the latter of which Spain had ceded Texas. 
Several attempts to annex Cuba and buy Texas were made be- 
fore 1830, but came to nothing. Meanwhile, several thou- 
sand Americans with slaves hurried to Texas and began rais- 
ing cotton ; at least two attempts were made by Americans to 
set up an independent republic there; and their determina- 
tion to break the loose tie binding the territory to Mexico was 
greatly strengthened by the emancipation of the slaves by the 
Mexican Constitution of 1827. After several failures, the 
Americans in Texas succeeded in establishing their independ- 
ence of Mexico in 1836 and secured recognition from the 
United States and several European nations the following 
year. 

With so anomalous a status they were by no means satis- 
fied and ardently desired annexation. This, the discovery by 
the Southern planters of the rapid exhaustion of available 
cotton land led the latter to support with might and main. 
The scheme was defeated in 1837. Now it became clear to the 
Southerners that Texas as an independent State had only to 
begin the direct importation of cheap negroes from Africa 
to sell cotton at a price with which the high price of slaves 
in the United States and the abolition of the slave trade 
would prevent them from competing. In addition, the rapid 
exhaustion of the virgin soil available in the Gulf States made 
it also possible that the profit from cotton would be so re- 
duced that its cultivation in Louisiana and Mississippi might 
no longer be profitable at all. The remedies were either an- 
nexation, which would impose permanently upon the Texans 
the same restraints to which the Southerners themselves were 
subject, or the repeal of the constitutional prohibition against 
the slave trade. 

The designs of the Southerners upon Cuba and Texas 



TEXAS AND THE MEXICAN WAR 261 

roused the suspicions of the Northern and Western men. 
The anti-slavery and abolition movements were becoming 
strong; anti-slavery petitions poured into Congress, where 
they found a stanch and able advocate in John Quincy 
Adams. What agitation and insistence had not been able to 
effect in Northern minds, the obvious trend of Southern am- 
bition promptly accomplished. Was it after all right to 
adopt a policy for the wide extension and development of an 
institution, the logic for whose extension was by no means 
as unanswerable as the arguments against interfering with it 
where it already existed ? Did not the South intend to create 
a new slave empire which would in time sweep into its maw 
the whole Gulf of IMexico and whose size and wealth would 
endanger the free States in the North? The fact that the 
South controlled the chief medium of exchange with Europe — 
and the only medium since the destruction of the prosperity of 
the English West Indian Islands by the abolition of slavery 
in 1833 — caused the Northern members of Congress to realize 
that the commercial situation might effectually chain their 
States to the chariot wheels of the new slave empire and that 
it behooved them to look well before they sanctioned its de- 
velopment. But the fear, which seemed at the time well- 
founded, of the annexation of Texas by England or France 
and the consequent creation there of a rival State capable 
of contesting with us the control of the Gulf and of the con- 
tinent, carried the day. In 1845, Texas was annexed by a 
joint resolution of the two Houses of Congress. 

The boundaries of the new State on the west and south had 
not yet been settled with Mexico and the territory claimed by 
the Texans, — a broad band stretching up into the country be- 
tween the Nueces River and the Rio Grande — was of im- 
mense size and probably of commensurate value. Its cession 
by Mexico could certainly be secured by a little show of force. 
The latter country was in the throes of an internal revolu- 
tion and could scarcely resist. War was declared in 1846 and 
the United States armies soon defeated the ill-equipped and 
badly disciplined levies of Mexicans. Webster and other 



262 THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 

Northern men inveighed hotly against the war as unprovoked 
and unjust aggression, and only in the South was popular 
approval widespread and outspoken. Charges were made 
that the President attempted to buy or annex the whole of 
Mexico and was forced to renounce his plans by the refusal 
of England and France to countenance the scheme. However 
this may have been, a treaty was signed in 18*18 which ceded 
to the United States the enormous territory west of the Rock- 
ies, south of Oregon and north of the present Mexican bound- 
ary (except a tract in southern Arizona purchased in 1853), 
— fully a quarter of the present area of the United States. 

At about this same time were concluded treaties with Eng- 
land which definitely settled the northern boundary, between 
the United States and Canada, nearly the whole length of 
which was in dispute. The real cause of the difficulty lay in 
the lack of accurate information about the topography of the 
interior at the time when the Treaty of 1783 and the Loui- 
siana Purchase of 1803 had been concluded. In the Northwest, 
the United States claimed that Maine extended almost to the 
St. Lawrence River, while the English declared the highlands 
mentioned by the negotiators were far to the south and east. 
In the West, it was found that the terms of the Treaty of 1783 
were impossible of fulfilment, and, as well, that much land 
which it had been evidently intended should belong to the 
United States was outside its boundaries and that other land 
it had not been intended to have was its property. Still fur- 
ther west, beyond the Rockies, was the great valley of the 
Columbia River, which both England and the United States 
claimed by virtue of title by discovery, and parts of whose 
valley had been already occupied by trappers and settlers of 
both nations. The western boundary was settled first, the 
parallel of the Lake of the Woods being accepted as far as the 
Rockies and a joint occupation of Oregon agreed upon. In 
1842, the boundary of Maine was compromised, and in 1846 
Oregon was divided b}' continuing the 49th parallel to the 
Pacific. 

In 1848, therefore, an enormous accession of territory had 



TEXAS AXD THR MEXICAN WAR 263 

just been made and its organization and status became a burn- 
ing question in Congress. Nor were the issues such as would 
permit of postponement. The demarcation of the western 
boundary of Texas was necessary in order to establish a gov- 
ernment over the disputed area, which was already occupied, 
and in which the Texans had immediately begun to assert 
their authority. In Oregon, the number and activity of 
trappers and settlers, the immense value of the fur-trade, as 
well as the need of authority of some sort for the preserva- 
tion of order, made prompt action in providing permanent or- 
ganization no less imperative. In California, gold was dis- 
covered, and in 1849 a rush to the new territory ensued of 
such proportions that the regulations concerning the number 
of inhabitants required for admission to statehood were prac- 
tically met at once. The prospecting stories which came back 
were amazing. A gold-seeker died from starvation and ex- 
posure; his partner determined to give up as soon as he had 
buried the body; in digging the grave he turned up a nugget 
of pure gold worth $40,000. A tramp, put off a wagon-train 
because he had not paid his fare, wandered across the fields, 
and literally stumbled over a nugget worth $2500. The idle, 
the adventurous, the desperate all started for Eldorado and 
formed a population particularly in need of strong govern- 
ment. 

These problems, whose solution was so essential, were at 
once discussed in the light of previous agitation and grouped 
themselves with other grievances of the North and of the 
South. The satisfactory decision of all seemed peculiarly 
difficult. California, already clamoring for statehood, pro- 
posed to tolerate no negroes, free or slave; ''California for 
white men" was the slogan. Even the descriptions of casual 
travelers in the arid plains of the great district then known 
as New Mexico convinced the Southerners that cotton could 
never be grown there and that the profitable use of slaves there 
for any purpose was highly problematical. Apparently the 
Mexican War had been worse than fruitless; it had added 
enormous reaches of free territory without increasing the 



264 THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 

available cotton land at all. Again, the war had ostensibly 
been fought to enforce the claims of Texas to the Rio Grande 
as a southern boundary and its success was assumed by the 
Texans to have guaranteed them the land in dispute. The 
United States, however, found itself heir to the claims of 
Mexico, and, when Congress began to realize how vast an 
area was affected by the Texan claims and how strong the 
Mexican ease had been, it soon assumed the extraordinary 
position of denying the rightfulness of the claims of Texas 
to establish whose rectitude the war itself had been fought. 
Here too the issue of slavery appeared. If the territory were 
adjudged part of Texas, it would at once become slave terri- 
tory forever; if it were left a part of New Mexico, Congress 
would then be able to consider its status. Strong objections 
were at once manifest among the New Englanders to any set- 
tlement in favor of Texas. 

Into this tangle of interests and prejudices were projected 
three old issues on which the North was becoming evidently 
more and more reluctant to allow the Southerners their way. 
The argument of the Abolitionists had done much to rouse 
feeling in the North, but had produced little effect compared 
with the sight of a fugitive slave fleeing from his master and 
pursued by United States marshals. If he was so happy in 
slavery, taunted the Abolitionists, why did he prefer to risk 
being torn to pieces by bloodhounds rather than stay with his 
' ' dear master " ? If the masters had the welfare and happiness 
of the slave so much at heart, why did they pursue him with 
hue and cry the moment he manifested unmistakably his dis- 
taste for slavery ? The fact that the negro was valuable prop- 
erty, that he was to be returned as a strayed or stolen horse, 
and was to be returned to forced labor under the lash moved 
many a Northerner to expressions of pity and abhorrence 
whom the impassioned utterances of Phillips had never 
stirred. The fugitive was to him a living illustration, de- 
posited at his very door, of the evils of slavery. The co- 
operation of the Northern communities in the capture and re- 
turn of fugitives had been promised in all colonial agreements 



TEXAS AND THE MEXICAN WAR 265 

between the States and occupied a prominent place in the 
Articles of Confederation and in the Constitution. Congress 
had more than once enacted legislation at the request of the 
South which was believed at the time to be sufficiently strin- 
gent. After 1840, however, it became more and more difficult 
to apprehend fugitives and it was well known that an * ' under- 
ground railroad" had been formed by the Abolitionists for 
passing the fugitive secretly from house to house to the Cana- 
dian frontier. In Ohio and Indiana, where slave territory 
was nearest Canada, the work was best organized and escapes 
most numerous; but many fugitives were passed through 
Philadelphia into New York and New England and so into 
Canada. 

To stop this obvious defiance of Federal statutes had long 
been the object of the South, which was now clamoring for a 
law so severe as to stop the escape of slaves. In addition, 
some regularization or recognition was demanded of the 
' ' right ' ' of masters to travel through free territory with their 
slaves or even to remain there permanently without losing 
their "property." Slaves were thus held in most Northern 
States before the "War, and in Indiana and Illinois they were 
even numerous, but the sentiment was growing rapidly in 
favor of the English view that a slave brought into free terri- 
tory became at once free. To raise this point, the Dred Scott 
ease was at this time begun, whose decision on appeal by the 
Supreme Court was so very momentous an incident in the 
development of the crisis which led finally to hostilities. 

But to many members of Congress no issue so imperatively 
demanded settlement as the question of the continuance of 
the slave-trade in the District of Columbia. Must their de- 
bates be interrupted by the cries of auctioneers and of bidders 
and the clanking of chains at the slave auction just behind the 
Federal capitol ? In the District of Columbia, the slave-trade 
had no reason to exist because there was no active use of 
slaves for agriculture there; the powers to prohibit the prac- 
tice seemed to be vested in Congress, for the District could 
plausibly be argued to be of different status from the rest of 



266 THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 

the national domain. Its slave-trade was, said the more radi- 
cal, a standing and unnecessary insult to the North, kept in 
existence by the South purely as a demonstration of her dom- 
ination over the Federal government. 

The debates for the settlement of all these issues were long 
and eminently able, and centered round the Wilmot Proviso 
which proposed to exclude slavery from the Mexican acces- 
sions. The issue was boldly and plainly stated by the South- 
erners: the adoption of the Proviso would justify secession 
by the Southern States from the Union. The legislature of 
Virginia voted that rather than accept the Proviso the people 
of Virginia would make ' ' determined resistance at all hazards 
and to the last extremity." Public meetings and conventions 
throughout the South very generally expressed similar senti- 
ment, and at a great public banquet in South Carolina the 
toast, "A Southern Confederacy" was received with great 
enthusiasm.^ A convention of the Southern States at Nash- 
ville resolved in favor of the lawfulness and constitutionality 
of secession and was believed by many in the North to have 
met to concert measures for forming a new confederacy in 
case the North should not yield. It seems highly probable 
that Calhoun counseled war in 1850 on the ground that 
the provocation was sufficient, compromise merely a post- 
ponement of war, and the South more likely to prevail than 
she would be later. Indeed, confirmation of this belief is lent 
by the fact that even after the North yielded in 1850, the 
newspapers in South Carolina and a convention assembled to 
discuss the question were practically unanimous in favor of 
secession with or without the cooperation of other States ; and 
that in Mississippi the State campaign of 1851 was fought on 
the issue of secession with Jefferson Davis as the secessionist 
candidate for Governor and Foote as the candidate favoring 
an acceptance of the Compromise of 1850. There can be 
little doubt that many understood the alternative to be com- 

1 New York Tribune, April 25, 1849. "We firmly believe that there 
are sixty members of Congress who this day desire a dissolution of the 
Union and are plotting to effect it." Ibid., Feb. 23, 1850. 



TEXAS AND THE MEXICAN WAR 267 

promise or secession, and that the feeling at the North in 
favor of nationalism and union was stronger than the dislike 
of slavery or of its extension. 

The Compromise of 1850 was proposed by Clay, and, as 
finally adopted, provided that California should become a 
free State ; that the land claimed by Texas should be divided 
and that State compensated for the surrender of a consider- 
able part of her claims by the assumption by the United 
States of her indebtedness incurred while independent; but 
that the rest of the land acquired from Mexico should be or- 
ganized into Territories without stipulation concerning slav- 
ery. Slavery in the District of Columbia was abolished in 
exchange for a drastic fugitive-slave law. This provided 
for a summary trial wdthout jury (on the ground that every 
Northern jury invariably freed the negro), threw the burden 
of proof on the negro, and, where the owner had been com- 
pelled to prove the man his escaped slave, forced the accused 
to prove himself a free man. Above all, the testimony of 
slaves was excluded. It was "a law," said Emerson, "which 
no man can obey or abet the obeying without loss of self-re- 
spect and forfeiture of the name of a gentleman. ' ' ^ 

The Compromise was carried by Clay and Webster, who 
pleaded for union and peace, against Calhoun, Seward, and 
Chase, who predicted war and secession. As Webster showed, 
California was determined to be free and was too far away 
to permit effective coercion; the South might well yield that. 
The rest of the territory obtained from ]\Iexico was prevented 
by the laws of nature from becoming slave territory; it was 
simply a gratuitous insult to the South for the North to in- 
sist upon excluding slavery from it by law. The North might 
easily yield that. The Compromise of 1850 was an under- 
standing, an agreement, and never possessed nor was meant 
to possess legal status. Specific provisions for the execution 
of the agreement were passed in the form of six separate bills 
during August and September, 1850. There was much ex- 
ultation throughout the country, and it was openly claimed 

- Cabot's Emerson, 578. 



268 THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 

that the issues had been settled for good and all: — the South 
was satisfied; the North was content. Indeed, during the 
campaign of 1852, the perpetual observance of the existing 
agreement was constantly promised and campaign orators 
desecrated the name of the man who should again open the 
issue of slavery. 

But the handwriting was already on the wall, and there 
were some who saw it. Surely, the States' rights conven- 
tions, the approval of the right of secession, the Southern 
elections hotly contested and carried by narrow margins in 
favor of the Compromise, were sinister omens and boded ill for 
its perpetuity. At the same time, none of these incidents 
were invested by contemporaries with a tithe of the signifi- 
cance we now attach to them because talk of secession, nulli- 
fication, and actual dissolution of the union had been loud at 
every crisis in our history, and men had become accustomed 
to hearing every difficulty between the sections alleged as ade- 
quate cause for disunion. It was a truly ill omen that the 
men who had made the Compromise, who had for nearly 
forty years controlled the destinies of the country, had all 
passed away before the settlement was two years old. John 
Quincy Adams had died in 1848, and Calhoun had followed 
him in 1850, murmuring ' ' The South ! the poor South ! God 
knows what will become of her!" Benton was defeated for 
reelection in that same year and retired to private life; Clay 
and Webster both died in 1852 and it was universally felt 
that the pillars of the State had fallen. The control passed 
into the hands of younger men, — Seward, Chase, Davis, 
Douglas, — on the whole, into the hands of the enemies rather 
than the friends of the Compromise. It is one of the enigmas 
of history that men should delude themselves into the belief 
that the waters have been swept back with the broom of argu- 
ment at just the moment when the tidal wave, as yet a tiny 
crest of white along the distant horizon, is rushing towards 
them with the speed of a race-horse. 



XX 

THE IRREPRESSIBLE CONFLICT 

One of the most significant facts in the history of the United 
States is the growth in the North of the moral conviction that 
slavery was wrong. The North had become pretty thor- 
oughly convinced by 1850 that the South meant to extend 
slavery, but, until a clear majority of the people were agreed 
that slavery was morally wrong, the decision of the South to 
extend it still permitted discussion and made compromise 
possible. Until it became clear to both sides that compromise 
was impossible, a war could not result, and, for the historian 
of the United States the all important fact to make clear is 
the reason why two sections of the country fought each other 
for four years. A disagreement, a fundamental cleavage in 
the country, was clear in 1850 ; but disagreements, threats, sec- 
tional interests, a belief in the legality and possibility of 
secession were as old as the country itself. No one consid- 
ered them in themselves dangerous, and the union had been 
so many times on the brink of dissolution that men had almost 
begun to believe it capable of withstanding all shocks and at- 
tacks. A change took place after 1850 in the attitude of the 
North which treated the extension of slavery as a wrong, and 
which led the North to demand from the South a definite 
statement as to what the latter proposed to do about the ex- 
tension of that wrong. 

In the very year in which the great Compromise was passed^ 
a book was written by a poor woman in southern Ohio which 
became the most mighty ethical influence of the decade. 
Uncle Tom's Cabin presented slavery to the North in a con- 
crete, dramatic story, every incident of which was intended to 
convince the reader that slavery was wrong. Whether or not 

269 



270 THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 

the book was an accurate or fair picture of the institution is 
of little significance compared to the fact that within a few 
years a million and a half copies were sold to readers, an 
overwhelming majority of whom believed the story true. Not 
those tilings which are true, but those things which honest 
and sincere men and women believe to be true, are the bases of 
motive forces in history. Still, the North as a whole looked 
and saw nothing ; it listened and read but was not convinced. 

Now came three incidents which effectually roused the 
North and which to the thinking of millions confirmed the 
facts and pointed the moral lesson of Uncle Tom's Cahin — 
Kansas-Nebraska, the Dred Scott Decision, and the Lincoln- 
Douglas debates. Books and speeches had left the North in- 
different and apathetic because only a fraction of the people 
had been reached. The "Crime of Kansas" was writ high 
upon the heavens for him to read who ran. 

The vast stretches of the Louisiana Purchase to the west of 
Missouri and of the territories of Iowa and Minnesota had 
not yet been organized at all, and the stream of people surg- 
ing across the plains to California and Oregon now made 
necessary some sort of territorial government, if only to pre- 
serve the peace. There was in this nothing disputable, but 
the organization of the district instantly raised the question 
of the status of slavery and evoked from the North the state- 
ment that the Missouri Compromise had consecrated that land 
to freedom. It was evident to the South that, if this was 
true, slavery was already circumscribed, and that the end of 
its westward march and of its further development was al- 
ready in sight, for, with California free, Arkansas and Texas 
already settled, and the Indians in possession of the only other 
land south of 36° 30' at all suitable for cotton, there was no 
more new land for slave States and, short of the conquest of 
Mexico, there never would be any. The danger so long 
warded off was already upon them. The Missouri Compro- 
mise, the Southerners therefore argued, had been made when 
circumstances were entirely different and would now have an 
effect never intended by its framers. Headed by Douglas, 



THE IRREPRESSIBLE CONFLICT 271 

they demanded the opening of the unorganized territory to 
slavery and alleged that the Compromise of 1850 abrogated 
the Missouri Compromise, and that the latter had been never 
valid at all, but had been void from the first because Congress 
had no power to prohibit slavery in the Territories. 

Here was an issue concerned with great men, with great 
events ; with queries not merely political, moral, and religious, 
to be decided by general principles, and an appeal to logic 
and reason ; but with questions of fact upon which a definitive 
understanding had existed among statesmen of all parties for 
more than thirty years. The Northern men brushed aside 
the constitutional subtleties regarding the invalidity of the 
IMissouri Compromise and declared the new bill the breach of 
a compact considered sacred by a generation of statesmen.^ 
Despite a storm of protest and argument, the Kansas-Ne- 
braska Bill passed, dividing the great area into two parts, 
leaving the decision in regard to slavery to the vote of the in- 
habitants ("squatter sovereignty") and declaring the Mis- 
souri Compromise null and void. "It annuls all past com- 
promises with slavery," insisted Sumner of Massachusetts, 
"and makes all future compromises impossible. Thus it 
puts freedom and slavery face to face and bids them grapple." 
Chase of Ohio even more nearly touched the keynote of North- 
ern feeling. "You may pass it here," he told the senators, 
' ' it may become law. But its effect will be to satisfy all think- 
ing men that no compromises with slavery will endure, except 

1 It was not noted at the time and seems to have been hardly realized 
since that the Compromise of 1820 had already been broken. The 
western boundary of ^lissouri had originally been drawn straight 
north in continuation of the meridian of the point at the end of the 
southern line. This line crossed the Missouri River and left a tri- 
angular delta between it and the river, which of course did not form 
at tliat time any part of the western boundary of the State, a large 
and rich district coveted by the Missourians. According to the terms 
of the Compromise, this was free territory, but in 1833 the Federal 
government made a treaty with the Indians for the cession of that 
district and by act of Congress made it part of Missouri. If this act 
was or is legal, the Compromise of 1820 never had any legal status 
beyond that accorded by men to any "gentlemen's agreement." Shep- 
ard, Early History of Missouri, 111. 



272 THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 

SO long as they serve the interests of slavery." The Bill 
passed just before dawn, and, as the senators came down the 
steps at the Capitol, the morning guns at the Navy Yard were 
sounding the usual sunrise salute. The Democrats at once ex- 
claimed that they celebrated the victory just won. Chase 
turned to Sumner and said solemnly : * ' They celebrate a pres- 
ent victory, but the echoes they awake will never rest till 
slavery itself shall die," 

The excitement in the North was prodigious and the una- 
nimity of condemnation revealed a degree of agreement un- 
suspected. Douglas declared that he could have traveled 
from Chicago to Boston by the light of his own burning ef- 
figies; one hundred and three ladies in an Ohio village de- 
nounced him as a second Judas Iscariot and sent him the 
thirty pieces of silver for which they declared he had sold his 
Lord. 

Kansas had been opened to slavery ; the decision of the new 
settlers who voted at the first territorial election would de- 
cide its status so far as slavery was concerned. Men from all 
parts of the country joined in the rush to Kansas with the 
avowed intention of voting on one side or the other. The 
New England Emigrant Aid Society was formed to encour- 
age the resort of men opposed to slavery and an able man was 
sent to Kansas to direct the cause of the Free-State men, as 
they were soon called. From Washington came a Pro-Slavery 
man as governor, sent by the President of the United 
States with definite orders to make Kansas slave territory. 
When the time approached for the territorial election, at 
which the question of the status of Kansas while a Territory 
was to be decided, a rough, boisterous, unkempt mob of border 
rufSans came over from Missouri, voted at the election, and 
carried Kansas for slavery. There were about 2900 legal 
voters in the territory ; 5427 votes were cast for slavery, prov- 
ing to many Eastern men that slavery advocates intended 
to make Kansas ''slave" even if it were necessary to resort 
to foul means to do it. 

The Governor accepted the fraudulent votes as valid and 



THE IRREPRESSIBLE CONFLICT 273 

organized a Pro-Slavery legislature. The Free-State men pre- 
pared a constitution, elected a delegate to Congress by about 
a hundred more votes than had been cast for the Pro-Slavery 
delegate, and asked recognition from Congress as the true 
majority in Kansas, entitled to govern the territory by any 
proper interpretation of the recent act. Congress declined 
to accept their claim and for a while considered requesting the 
I'resident to suppress them. Meanwhile, the Pro-Slavery men, 
aided by a large mob from Missouri, advanced upon the 
, Free-State town of Lawrence, intending to sack it, but the 
Free-State men were well armed and a truce was agreed to 
by the leaders, cold weather arrived, and the ''army" Mdth- 
drew, carrying three dead bodies, — one man killed by the 
falling of a tree, one shot by his own guard, and a third 
killed in a brawl. In Lawrence, one man alone protested 
against the agreement not to fight, — a tall, slender man with 
a somber face, fired with intense earnestness, John Brown. 

The Pro-Slavery men retired, avowedly but to await a better 
opportunity. The sheriff a little afterward was in Lawrence, 
and, a shot intended for some one else coming in his direc- 
tion by accident, he declared that the Free-State men had 
attempted to murder him. He impaneled a grand jury which 
indicted them all for murder, and the marshal gathered a 
posse of some scores of men from Kansas and a thousand 
or more ruffians, who came over the river from Missouri, 
armed to the teeth and well provided with whisky. At 
Lawrence no resistance was offered ; some arrests were quietly 
made ; but the Missourians were not to be balked twice. The 
town was thoroughly sacked on May 20, 1856. 

Two days later, in the United States Senate, Cliarles Sum- 
ner of Massachusetts delivered an eloquent and bitter ar- 
raignment of the Pro-Slavery attitude towards Kansas. To 
"\npe out the insult to the South, as he deemed it to be, Brooks 
of South Carolina approached Sumner, writing at his desk in 
the almost empty Senate Chamber, and struck him repeatedly 
on the head from behind with a heavy cane till he fell from 
his chair unconscious. The news of the sack of Lawrence 



274 THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 

and of the assault on Sumner reached the country almost 
simultaneously and caused an outburst of indignation and 
anger at the North such as had never been known before. 
The newspapers came out with great black headlines, "The 
Crime against Kansas," ''Bleeding Kansas," "Shrieks from 
Kansas. ' ' The effect would have been immeasurably less pro- 
found had not the South openly declared the cause of the 
Pro-Slavery men in Kansas that of the South itself, and if 
it had not rejoiced at the assault upon Sumner, tendering 
banquets to his assailant at which gold canes were presented 
to him and his health toasted. 

Whatever actually happened in Kansas, the North believed 
that a premeditated design was being executed by fraud and 
force to make Kansas slave. To secure the opportunity the 
South had broken so sacred a compact as the Missouri Com- 
promise and had provided that the people who went to Kansas 
should decide for or against slavery. But finding the majority 
were Free-State men, ballot boxes had been stuffed, innocent 
men slain, an unresisting town sacked by a drunken crew of 
ruffians imported for the purpose. And such actions the 
President and Congress of the United States had approved 
by the high authority vested in them and behind these ruffians 
had placed the sanction of Federal authority ! The President 
had removed seriatim the Governors who declined to obey 
his partisan orders to support the Pro-Slavery party with 
Federal troops ; the Houses of Congress had declined to accept 
the government formed by the numerical majority in Kansas. 
To pass the enabling act they had been forced to descend to 
perjury and fraud; to prevent the honest execution of their 
own measure, they had been driven to deceit, arson, and 
murder. They had been willing to allow the inhabitants of 
Kansas to vote in favor of slavery; they had no intention 
at all of recognizing as valid the vote against it,- 

2 "While the Nebraska Bill was pending, Judge Douglas helped to 
vote down a clause giving the people of the Territories the right 
to exclude slavery if they chose." Lincoln, speech at Beardstown, 1858. 
Herndon, Life of Lincoln, II, 99-100. 



THE IRREPRESSIBLE CONFLICT 275 

The following month of June, 1856, saw the first national 
convention of a new political party, the Republican party, 
composed of men opposed to the extension of slavery. There 
can be no doubt that its strength and unity were largely due 
to the events in Kansas. Throughout the North had sprung 
up during the preceding fifteen years groups of men, for the 
most part fragments of the old Whig party, who were try- 
ing to organize an opposition to the ruling party, and most 
of whom had made prominent in their platform a plank either 
connected with liberty or wath some form of opposition to 
slavery. The movement to fuse them into one party had 
begun in the Northwest and had been on the whole successful, 
but was made positive and permanent by the spectacle of 
"bleeding Kansas." In a great speech at Rochester, N. Y., 
Seward struck the kejTiote of the campaign: "It is an ir- 
repressible conflict between opposing and enduring forces and 
it means that the United States must and will, sooner or later, 
become either entirely a slaveholding nation or entirely a 
free labor nation. ... I know and you know that a revolution 
has begun. I know and all the world knows that revolutions 
never go backwards." Fremont was nominated by the Re- 
publicans and ran on a platform which opposed the further 
extension of slavery. Apprehension at the South was keen, 
and preparations for secession, should he be elected, were 
said to have been made. The Democrats elected Buchanan 
President, but they carried only four Northern States and the 
popular vote gave them only half a million votes more than 
the Republicans. The moral feeling of the North that slavery 
was wrong had attained effective political expression in a 
strong new party pledged to prevent its extension. 

Now came the pronouncement in 1857 of the decision of the 
Supreme Court in the famous Dred Scott case. The issue 
was essentially simple: Scott, a slave, had been carried by 
his master into free territory, where he had long resided, and 
whence he had then wdllingly accompanied his master back 
into slave territory. The claim was that his residence in free 
territory had made him free; but the case took such a form 



276 THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 

that the only issue for the court to decide was his status 
at the time of the suit's institution. A majority of the judges 
agreed that he was then a slave and hence unable to sue 
in the courts, but disagreed entirely upon the reasoning by 
which they reached that conclusion. The political signifi- 
cance of the ease arose from the fact that some of the judges, 
notably the Chief Justice, a Southerner, considered in his 
opinion and pronounced in favor of the South upon the 
multitudinous constitutional controversies regarding slavery. 
That Taney acted with high-minded purpose in an attempt 
to fend off possible war, is clear; that the South proclaimed 
from the house-tops that the Supreme Court had decided for 
all time in favor of slavery upon the legal issues, is also 
clear; that the North utterly declined to accept the new 
decision as of any validity, is beyond doubt at all. The 
arguments of the judges roused the North far less than the 
conclusions which the South drew from them and the signifi- 
cance the South was determined to give them. If Congress 
had no power over slavery in the States, and if the decision 
meant that it could not prohibit slavery in the Territories, 
it had then no discretion at all ; it could act only to preserve, 
extend, and protect slavery. Taney's opinion was soon con- 
densed into an aphorism which obtained great currency at 
the North, — 'that negroes had no rights which the white man 
was bound to respect. ' 

The Northern lawyers instantly pointed out that the de- 
cision of the court, which alone was of legal obligation, 
concerned Dred Scott, and that the long arguments concern- 
ing the status of slavery were merely obiter dicta, which the 
practice of centuries held to be of no legal obligation what- 
ever. But, even if these statements upon the general con- 
troversy were valid, there was no agreement among the judges 
upon these points, and to declare the individual opinion of 
the Chief Justice the decision of the court was a flat contra- 
diction of obvious facts. As if to give point to the argu- 
ments of the angry Northern lawyers, the Southern Demo- 
crats printed thousands of copies of Taney's opinion, dis- 



THE IRREPRESSIBLE CONFLICT 277 

tributed them as campaign documents, and openly taunted the 
Republicans, demanding "Well, what are you going to do 
about it?" Was it true, the Northern leaders asked each 
other, that slavery could not be constitutionally restricted, 
that this wrong was to be perpetuated despite them, was 
protected by the Constitution itself and defended by Presi- 
dent, Congress, and Supreme Court? "Alas," lamented the 
New York Tribune, "the character of the Supreme Court of 
the United States as an impartial judicial body has gone! 
It has abdicated its just functions and descended into the 
political mire. ... It has draggled and polluted the ermine 
in the filth of pro-slavery polities." 

Now came news in the fall of 1858 that out in the West, 
the * ' little Giant, ' ' the great Douglas himself, had been bested 
in a series of debates by a lanky, raw-boned Illinois country 
lawyer, a mighty plain-spoken man, affectionately alluded to 
by his admirers, as the "Tall Sucker," — Abraham Lincoln. 
What he said was startlingly clear and expressed what many 
in the countr}^ had long been tr^dng to say for themselves. 
He was able to grasp both sides of the issue; to make every 
allowance a fair-minded man could ask, but his statement 
of the crux of the difficulty was illuminating and satisfying. 

"I think I have no prejudice against the Southern people," 
he told his audience at Galesburg. "They are just what we 
would be in their situation. If slavery did not now exist 
amongst them they would not introduce it. If it did now 
exist amongst us, we should not instantly give it up. This 
I believe of the masses of the North and South. . . . When 
Southern people tell us that they are no more responsible for 
the origin of slavery than we, I acknowledge the fact. Wheii 
it is said that the institution exists, and that it is very difficult 
to get rid of it, in any satisfactory way, I can understand and 
appreciate the saying. I surely will not blame them for 
not doing what I should not know how to do myself. If all 
earthly power were given me, I should not know what to do 
as to the existing institution. ... I have no purpose, di- 
rectly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery 



278 THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 

in the states where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right 
to do so, and I have no inclination to do so. I have no 
purpose to introduce political and social equality between 
the white and black races. . . . But I hold that, not- 
withstanding all this, there is no reason in the world why 
the negro is not entitled to all the natural rights enumerated 
in the Declaration of Independence — the right to life, liberty, 
and the pursuit of happiness. ... In the right to eat the 
bread without the leave of anybody else, which his own hand 
earns, he is my equal and the equal of Judge Douglas, and 
the equal of every living man." "To satisfy the Southern- 
ers," he said to a New York audience in 1859, "we must 
cease to call slavery wrong, and join them in calling it right. 
And this must be done thoroughly, done in acts as well as 
words. ... If it is right, we cannot object to its nationality, 
its universality; if it is wrong, they cannot justly insist 
upon its extension, its enlargement. All they ask we could 
readily grant, if we thought slavery right; all we ask they 
could as readily grant, if they thought it wrong. Their 
thinking it right and our thinking it wrong is the precise 
fact upon which depends the whole controversy. Thinking it 
right, as they do, they are not to blame for desiring its full 
recognition, as being right; but thinking it wrong, as we do, 
can we yield to them? ... If our sense of duty forbids 
this, ... let us be diverted by no sophistical consequences — 
such as groping for some middle ground between the right 
and the wrong, vain as the search for a man who should be 
neither a living man nor a dead man; such as a policy of 
'don't care' on a question about which all true men do 
care." 

Lincoln's reputation spread; the East wished to hear him 
and he spoke in many parts of the country, always to the 
same purpose, always leaving behind him a deep impression 
of his fairness, honesty, and sincerity. Above all, he was 
a "plain man," who used plain language. If slavery was 
right, why not extend it ? If slavery was wrong, why consider 
its extension at all? How could one coolly propose to per- 



THE IRREPRESSIBLE CONFLICT 279 

petuate a wrong? Should the South be allowed to destroy 
the IMissouri Compromise, commit arson and murder in Kansas, 
drag the judicial ermine in the mire, to extend and per- 
petuate a wrong? He gave the Northern people an ethical 
test to apply to the situation which at last enabled them to 
make up their minds. 

At this juncture, a book written by a "poor white" in 
North Carolina, The Impending Crisis of the South, raised 
squarely the most significant issue of all, as was promptly 
recognized both North and South. If slavery was so good 
a thing, for u'hose good wa^ it? Helper emphasized with 
relentless force the facts in the United States census, that the 
direct benefits of slavery accrued to only a part of the whites 
at the South; that the splendor, luxury, and culture of the 
South, which had been so praised, were the possession of 
a small minority of the whites, who ruled for their own 
particular benefit six million whites and nearly four million 
blaclvs. The problem, he showed, was not one of two di- 
mensions, concerned onl}^ A^ath the master and his slave, but 
one of the three dimensions, concerned with master, slave, and 
the poor whites, the overwhelming majority of the white 
people at the South, who had no vital interest in slavery 
and no hopes of possessing any. Pitilessly he exposed their 
poverty, their lack of economic, social, and political rights, 
and demanded the abolition of slavery in the name of the ma- 
jority of the whites in the South, as the only means of restoring 
to them their true freedom and privileges, as the only means of 
pro\iding a market for their labor and their produce. JJyicle 
Tom's Cabin had told of the wrongs done to the slave ; Helper 
dwelt upon the WTongs done to the white man. Great piles 
of the book became a familiar sight in Northern book stores; 
the Republicans circulated it as a campaign document; the 
Southerners further advertised it by their efforts to secure 
its suppression. The querj^ began to form in Northern minds : 
is not this fear of discussion, this desire to prevent investi- 
gation an.d comment fathered by the knowledge that the 
facts are not as favorable to slavery as they allege them to 



280 THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 

be? Had the poor whites in the South been able to read 
and understand the book, it would have spelled the fall of 
the slave-power. 

Nor did the clamor at the South for the reopening of the 
slave-trade fail to furnish Northern, minds with corroboration 
of the arguments of Lincoln and Helper. In 1858, a con- 
vention in Alabama gave its entire attention to the subject; 
a general convention at Vicksburg in 1859 voted two to one in 
favor of reopening the slave-trade, while in the legislature of 
Louisiana bills were under consideration for the importation 
of ''black apprentices," and some thousands of negroes were 
actually smuggled into the country from Africa. The Charles- 
ton Mercury, one of the most influential papers in the South, 
championed the cause ardently and declared that the decay 
of cotton-culture in South Carolina was wholly due to the 
prohibition upon the importation of slaves. 

And now sounded through the land what many felt was 
the voice crying in the wilderness, shouting the battle-cry 
of freedom. A man came forward calling for action: 
' ' These men are all talk — what we want is action — action ! ' ' 
Men were needed, he said, who would ''break the jaws of 
the wicked and pluck the spoil out of his teeth." John 
Brown nourished himself upon the avenging clauses of the 
Old Testament and believed himself called to be the soldier 
of the Lord, called to wreak God's vengeance upon the Pro- 
Slavery men. He had been in Kansas and had murdered 
men in cold blood in the name of Truth and Justice. Now 
he believed that the knowledge among the slaves that a 
haven of refuge existed in the mountains of Virginia, where 
they would be protected by force from capture, w^ould lead 
to a general attempt to escape and perhaps to a slave insur- 
rection. The remarkable thing about Brown's raid is the 
philanthropists of national repute whose support he secured, 
and who provided him with money and arms. After all 
has been said, there must have been something remarkable 
about the man. The raid failed; he held the arsenal at 



THE IRREPRESSIBLE CONFLICT 281 

Harper's Perry for a few hours, and then was captured 
by Federal troops. 

The news of an attempt to rouse and arm the slaves caused 
in the South a paroxysm of terror and a demand for justice 
on the perpetrator and protection for the South from the 
Federal government. The North was stirred as never before 
by the sight of a man who voluntarily, cheerfully, laid do\^Ta 
his life for the principle that slavery was wrong, "The 
cry of the oppressed," he said in prison, "is my reason and 
the only thing that prompted me to come here." "I feel 
just as content to die for God's eternal truth on the scaifold 
as in any other way." All his sins were forgotten in his 
atonement. To the Northern Abolitionists, he was a martyr. 
To them, the moment for the downfall of slavery was near, — 
a man had died for the cause ! ' ' This will be a great day 
in our history," wrote the poet Longfellow in his journal 
under the date of John Brown's execution, "the date of a new 
revolution quite as much needed as the old one. ' ' Four years 
later, when on the battlefield at Gettysburg, the last gallant 
charge of Pickett's brigade faltered, broke, and fled, the 
Union soldiers on Round Top swung their caps in the air 
and chanted in mighty chorus, rolling out over the valley 
filled with the flying and the pursuers, 

"John Brown's body lies a-mouldering in the grave, — 
His soul goes marching on." 



XXI 

THE CAUSES OP SECESSION 

On a very momentous day in the annals of America a body 
of representative men were assembled to discuss the most 
vital issue of the time. In the chair was a man long 
venerated for his probity and wisdom. The crisis in the dis- 
cussion of the critical issue had been reached; different 
opinions had been hotly maintained by excited disputants; 
and the matter then engrossing the minds of all was the cause 
of so serious a disagreement. The speaker addressing the 
assembly contended — to use the words of the record — "that 
the States were divided into different interests, not by their 
difference of size but by other circumstances, the most material 
of which resulted partly from climate, but principally from 
the effects of their having or not having slaves. These two 
causes concurred in forming the great division of interests 
in the United States. It did not lie between the large and 
smaU States: It lay between the Northern and the South- 
ern."^ Those words were spoken by James Madison in the 
Convention which framed the Constitution of the United 
States. The vital cleft of the country into North and South 
is older than the Constitution, older than States ' rights, older 
than the cotton-culture, older than the anti-slavery movement. 
Later in the debate, Gouverneur Morris declared that this 
distinction between the Northern and Southern States "is 
either fictitious or real ; if fictitious, let it be dismissed and let 
us proceed with due confidence. If it be real, instead of 
attempting to blend incompatible things, let us at once take a 
friendly leave of each other."- With him agreed Luther 

1 Hunt's Madison's Notes, I, 278. 

2 Hunt's Madison's Notes, I, 351. What eventually happened vvaa 

282 



THE CAUSES OF SECESSION 283 

jMartin of ^Maryland. "He was for letting a separation take 
place if they desired it; he had rather there should be two 
confederacies than one" founded on such principles as those 
proposed.^ James Wilson of Pennsylvania added that he 
knew some respectable, earnest men who preferred three 
confederacies, united by offensive and defensive alliances.* 
Such ideas, however, were far from new to the listeners. 
Half the earlier schemes for central government had pro- 
vided for two, three, or even four confederacies. Nullifi- 
cation had appeared in the New England Confederacy when 
IMassachusetts and Plymouth were hardly more than a score 
of years old. The right of secession had been openly pro- 
claimed in the debates upon the adoption of the Declaration 
of Independence.^ The infant nation, in fact, was suckled by 
secession and nourished upon States' rights. After the Con- 
vention had finished its work and the Constitution was before 
the country for adoption, Cyrus Griffin wrote from New York : 
"We are told that Mr. George Mason (of Virginia) has 
declared himself so great an enemy to the Constitution that 
he will heartily join Mr. Henry and others in promoting a 
Southern Confederacy." ^ Indeed so true was this prediction, 
that when the Virginia Convention had adopted the Constitu- 
tion, Patrick Henry was invited by the minority to become 
President of a body to formulate plans for the formation of an- 
other Confederacy. Probably nothing but his refusal to 
countenance it prevented its success.'' 

foreseen. Kinp; said : "If they [the Southern States] threaten to sepa- 
rate now in case injury shall be done them, will their threats be less 
urgent or effectual, when force shall back their demands? Even in the 
intervening period, there will be no point of time at which they will 
not be able to say, 'Do us justice or we will separate.' " Ibid., 345-6. 

sibid., 356; 253. 

*Ihid., 363. 

5 It was said that the delegates of such States as did not agree to 
independence must withdraw from Congress "and possibly their colo- 
nies might secede from the union." Quoted in Hazelton, Declaration 
of Independence, 112. 

6 Bancroft's History of the Constitution, IT, 461. 

7 Rowland's Life of Mason, II, 274. The whole incident is fully 
described. 



284 THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 

Not only were those ideas old when the Constitution was 
adopted, when slavery was believed to be dying a natural 
death, and when the cotton-gin had not yet made cotton- 
culture profitable in America; but in the succeeding gener- 
ations these notions were held by Northern and Western 
States as well as by Southern. It is probably no exagger- 
ation to say that when the great debates over the admis- 
sion of Missouri in 1819 made clear for the first time the 
depth of the cleft between the North and South, every State 
in the Union had at some time within the preceding half 
century nullified some law or threatened to secede. North, 
South, West, East, had all planned secession before 1820, 
before the issues and factors prominent in the later struggle 
had unmistakably appeared. 

In fact, the fundamental issues of the Civil War were old 
and not new. They were fundamental in the broadest sense, 
far transcending the influence or notions of any man or 
group of men, or indeed of any single generation. They 
were not produced by Calhoun, Davis, or Lincoln, and were 
of a nature which, in fact, forbade their conscious creation 
at all. No individual or body of individuals, no section of 
the country was in this sense to blame for the Civil War. 
It was, in the last analysis, the result of climate and of 
geographical conditions as old as the Glacial period, which 
began to exert their influence when the mammoth flourished 
in Kansas and when the cave bear still suckled her young 
in the Virginia mountains. We must very carefully separate 
the difficulty which created the possibility of a disagreement 
between two sections of this country from its own fundamental 
causes and also from those particular manifestations of it 
in the early nineteenth century about which men began to 
argue. We have even then only approached the situation 
where we find men drifting from disagreement into threats 
and from threats into defiance, and we must still make 
clear the specific factors and events which created two radical 
parties who could see no solution except in war. And even 
when we have found the cause of the determination to fight 



THE CAUSES OF SECESSION" 285 

we are still far from the actual casus belli over which the 
fighting began. The technical casus belli, the firing on Sum- 
ter, no doubt grew out of a disagreement on the constitutional 
question of States ' rights ; and the student wdll on this gi'ound 
agree mth the position of Davis and of Stephens after the 
War that States' rights was the sole and only cause of the 
War. The issue, however, which brought States' rights to 
the fore in 1860 was unquestionably slavery, and the student 
can on this basis agree with Lincoln and many historians 
that a difference of opinion over slavery really caused the 
War. But if the student seeks the reasons why both slavery 
and States' rights were under discussion at all, he will see 
that sectionalism, the existence in the country of two strata 
widely differing in economic and institutional life, was the 
real difficulty, and he will find its existence adequately ex- 
plained by the geographical and geological factors operating 
in America for uncounted millions of years. These conditions 
were found by the first settlers; they shaped colonial history 
when the white slaves in the South outnumbered the black; 
moulded the Constitution; produced tobacco, cotton, slavery, 
and the War; and are still to-day actively fashioning the 
issues of presidential campaigns. 

The great events of American history have been attempts 
to reconcile the outward political form of the government 
with great existing economic and social facts. In 1776, the 
States were in all but law and name independent of England ; 
the Revolution merely brought the political situation into 
conformity with the actual facts. In 1789, the Constitution 
set up a relationship between the States on the whole in con- 
formity with their actual relations. But in the subsequent 
decades were developed two great economic forces utterly 
changing the situation ; and men began to argue whether the 
superior economic power was the diversified industry of the 
North or the growth of cotton by slaves. Slavery, cotton, 
machinery, railroads, tariff, new territory, had been either 
very minor factors or not dreamed of when the Constitution 
was framed. Their constitutionality was therefore a most 



286 THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 

legitimate issue for debate, and the task of the Civil War was 
the adjustment of the legal fabric of central government to 
the obvious economic and territorial facts in existence. 

At the same time that we recognize the fundamental char- 
acter of the cleft between the sections and the absolute neces- 
sity of some sort of decision upon the fundamental constitu- 
tional relations of new economic forces to the older economic 
and political factors, we must not assume that their settle- 
ment by the arbitrament of arms was inevitable. Had the 
country developed more slowly and less, as it were, by spas- 
modic spurts, the adjustment of forces would perhaps have 
insensibly taken place in the course of their development.^ 
The immediate cause of war was the impossibility of settling 
the issues by compromise or agreement. For fully forty years, 
the statesmen of the various sections successfully made com- 
promise after compromise. Indeed, the period between 1820 
and 1860 ought perhaps to be studied less as the growth of 
the war-spirit than as a time when the solitary object of all 
parties was the avoidance of hostilities. But this prolonged 
attempt to settle the fundamental relations of the two sections 
was frustrated by the very rapidity of the country's growth. 
No sooner had some compromise mutually satisfactory to all 
been made with much rejoicing than the whole situation, 
which it was intended to adjust, was entirely changed by the 
appearance of unforeseen factors of sufficient importance to 
produce a new situation, which raised the old fundamental 
questions with greater insistence. The Constitution itself was 
the first compromise and the only one to be lasting. The 
Missouri Compromise was invalidated (though not made void) 

8 "The question of the relation of the States to the Federal govern- 
ment is the cardinal question of our constitutional system. At every 
turn of our national development, we have been brought face to face 
with it, and no definition either of statesmen or of judges has ever 
quieted it or decided it. It cannot, indeed, be settled by the opinion 
of any one generation, because it is a question of growth, and every 
successive stage of our political and economic development gives it a 
new aspect, makes it a new question." Woodrow Wilson, in the North 
American Review, 187, 684. 



THE CAUSES OF SECESSION 287 

by the astonishing growth of the eotton-eulture and cotton- 
manufacture. The "American System," which was to pro- 
vide for the interests of the various sections, was deemed 
unsatisfactory in the South as soon as it was adopted be- 
cause of the severity of the commercial crisis in Europe just 
previous to 1830, whose influence on the price of cotton the 
South attributed solely to the tariff. The annexation of Texas 
and the Mexican War added so little land suitable for cotton 
to the existing area of the country that it was soon clearly 
apparent to the Southern leaders that the Compromise of 
1850 was on the whole a victory for the North. Indeed, the 
extraordinary rapidity with which the available land in these 
enormous areas was occupied and in some fashion utilized made 
it literally impossible to foresee what the ensuing five years' 
growth would bring forward. 

In 1860, the Southern leaders were still as sure as before 
that there was unlimited wealth to be had by the develop- 
ment of the cotton-culture, but they were certain that the 
degree of profit previously obtained would be inevitably re- 
duced by the lack of new lands of the most fertile type, and 
by the enormous increase in the value of slaves from $600 in 
1836 to $1400 in 1856. The reopening of the slave-trade would 
solve the difficulty by promptly furnishing such cheap labor 
that the fields already cropped and the less fertile soil in the 
South not yet utilized could be tilled at an enormous profit. 
The Constitution, however, stood squarely in the way of this 
remedy, for it definitely conferred on the Federal government 
the right, already exercised, to prohibit the slave-trade. New 
land could not be provided because there was no more land 
in the vast area of the United States which could be opened 
to cotton into which cotton was likely to go and, while the 
Southern States remained in the Union, there was no pros- 
pect of the annexation of land in the Gulf of Mexico. The 
extension of the influence of the United States in the Gulf 
and in Central America had been attempted in the decade 
following 1850, but England and France had determinedly 
interposed and had secured the signature of such treaties as 



288 THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 

practically forbade the United States to develop any vital 
interests in the Gulf except in concert with them. Secession 
would be a remedy and perhaps the only one. "I want 
Cuba," declared a Southern senator, "I want Tamaulipas, 
Potosi, and one or two other Mexican states ; and I want them 
all for the same reason — for the planting and spreading of 
slavery. And a footing in Central America will wonderfully 
aid us in acquiring those states. . . . Whether we can ob- 
tain the territory while the Union lasts, I do not know; I 
fear we cannot. But I would make an honest effort, and if 
we failed, I would go out of the Union and try it there."® 
For, after the cotton States had split off from the Northern 
States, whose industrial and maritime growth England found 
dangerous to her supremacy, England might well look with 
favor on the scheme of a Southern Empire for the growing by 
slave labor in the Gulf of Mexico of that cotton on which the 
prosperity of northern England so entirely depended. It 
was the political tie, the Constitution, which was the greatest 
incubus, and which saddled the suffering South with tariffs 
and diplomatic difficulties. Nothing else stood in their way, 
thought the Southerners; there were no economic, geograph- 
ical, or institutional barriers in the way of Southern great- 
ness and prosperity. It is this belief that the political bond 
was the stumbling-block of offense which is at the root of the 
belief in the possibility and expediency of secession. 

Moreover, if the clash of arms was ever to come, it was 
eminently clear to the Southern leaders that they must move 
before the disparity in size of the North and South should 
become more pronounced. In 1828, in 1845, in 1850, with the 
Federal government really in their hands, with the wealth 
of the South increasing at a phenomenal rate, with a retarda- 

9 C. D. Drake, Union and Anti-Slavery Speeches, 184. Morton's 
Southern Empire lias much evidence pro and con (mostly pro) this idea 
of expansion. "In the event of Southern secession, they contemplated 
a magnificent Confederacy of slave-holding States, including Cuba. 
Mexico, and Central America." Hodgson, Cradle of the Confederacy, 
319. See his interesting account of the attempt of Lopez in 1850-51 to 
seize Cuba, pp. 314 et seq. 



THE CAUSES OF SECESSION 289 

tion of that growth hardly likely, there was little to be gained 
by war which might not improbably be obtained by com- 
promise. It seemed certain that their chances would be bet- 
ter at some future time. Calhoun had indeed solemnly 
warned the leaders in 1847 that the South was, in comparison 
to the North, stronger then than it would ever be again,^° 
but the growth of the following decade was needed to bring 
that fact home to them.^^ The real genesis of the actual fight- 
ing is to be found in the history of the years 1854-1860. In 
the debates over the Kansas-Nebraska Bill in 1854, a Vir- 
ginian had exclaimed in the House, "If you restore the Mis- 
souri Compromise, this Union will be dissolved," and from 
all sides had risen derisive mockijig shouts of ' ' Oh ! No ! " In 
the spring of 1860, the shadow^ of the coming crisis had al- 
ready fallen athwart the floor of the House. The lack of new 
territory from which to make slave States; the rapid growth 
of new free States showed the Southerners that their con- 
trol of the Senate was tottering, and to lose it meant to them 
the loss of the only benefit they derived from the Federal 
union, — the protection of their peculiar institution by the 
Federal government. With the free States in control at 
Washington, with Northern sentiment hostile to slavery, and 
with public opinion strong against the enforcement of the 

10 " Calhoun in a letter to a member of the Alabama legislature at 
this time, said that 'instead of shunning we ought to court the issue 
with the North on the slavery question'; that he would go one step 
farther and 'force the issue on the North.' 'We are now stronger, 
relatively,' said Mr. Calhoun, 'than we shall be hereafter politically 
and morally.' " Hodgson, The Cradle of the Confederacy, 273. The 
letter was not printed in Calhoun's Works. See also the quotations 
from the address of a convention to the people of Alabama on the 
danger of delay, pp. 331-2. 

11 "All admit that an ultimate dissolution of the Union is inevitable 
and we believe that the crisis is not far off. Then let it come now; 
the better for the South tliat it should be to-day; she cannot afford to 
wait. With the North it is different. Every day adds to her sectional 
strength and every day the balance of power becomes less proportionate 
between the two sections. In a few more years, . . . our doom will 
be sealed." Charleston Mercury, Sept. 18, 1860. Sherman's Southern 
friends told him the same. See the letters of W. T. Sherman. 



290 THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 

Fugitive-Slave laws, every guarantee would disappear, and 
Mason and Dixon's line would become in vfery fact the 
boundary between two hostile confederacies. Nor did the 
North fail to perceive the real issue: — that the South dared 
not risk longer delay .^^ "The fault of the free states in the 
eyes of the South," wrote Lowell in the Atlantic Monthly, 
"is not one that can be atoned for by any yielding of special 
points here and there. Their offense is that they are free 
and that their habits and prepossessions are those of free- 
dom. Their crime is the census of 1860. Their increase in 
numbers, wealth, and power is a standing aggression. . . . 
What they (the Southerners) demand is nothing less than 
that we should abolish the spirit of the age. ... It is the 
stars in their courses that fight against their system. ' ' ^^ 

In 1860, the white population north of Mason and Dixon's 
line and of the Ohio River was about twenty millions and 
that south of the line about eight millions with four millions 
of negroes : and during the past decade the North had grown 
41% and the South 27%. Not only were the whites at the 
North already more than double those at the South in num- 
ber, but they were increasing nearly twice as fast (the more 
considerable part of the total Southern growth was among 
the negroes), and a decade hence the disparity might not be 
merely twice but thrice or even more! The census also re- 

12 Aa early as Dec. 14, 1843, George Ticknor wrote from Boston to 
Sir Charles Lyell, in London, "I would wait as a Northern man, because 
it is for my interest. The South is growing weak, we are growing 
strong. The Southern States are not only losing their relative conse- 
quence in the Union, but from the inherent and manifold mischiefs of 
slavery, they are positively growing poor. They are falling back in 
refinement, civilization, and power. EVery year puts the advantage 
more on our side, and prepares us better to meet the contest . . . which 
can never be other than formidable and disastrous." Life and Letters 
of Ticknor, II, 218. On Nov. 27, 18G0, he wrote again to Lyell: "The 
cry is that the South is in danger, because the South is in the minority 
and is weak; and they had better go out of the LTnion before they be- 
come weaker and more feeble by the constantly increasing power of the 
free States." Ibid., II, 4.31. Ticknor gives this statement as something 
currently known and understood in Boston. 

13 January 1861. 



THE CAUSES OF SECESSION 291 

vealed astonishing facts about the South which ill-compared 
with its list of populous cities and thriving towns at the North. 
In Alabama the census recorded fifteen towns, nine of which 
had a population of less than a thousand; in Arkansas, two 
towns; in South Carolina, three, besides Charleston, with 
more than a thousand people. To the arguments of Helper 
the census gave only too accurate and prompt confirmation. 
Only 10,781 families owned as many as 50 slaves; 1733 men 
owned the plantations on which more than 100 slaves were 
employed. In Virginia, out of a million whites, only 114 
owTied more than 100 slaves. Less than two million whites 
in the whole South were in any way concerned with slavery; 
over six millions neither owned slaves nor derived direct bene- 
fit from their labor. "That this body of three-fourths of 
the white men of the whole South should have fought stub- 
bornly for four years to fasten on more completely bonds 
which restricted them to every inferiority of life is one of 
the most extraordinary facts of history." Had not States '- 
rights feeling been so strong, had these poor whites not under- 
stood that the independent sovereignty of the States was at 
issue, their adherence would scarcely have been given to the 
new Confederacy. 

The productivity of the two sections roughly divided on 
]\Iasou and Dixon's line was amazingly different and showed 
clearly the results of the portentous development of varied 
industry in the North and the unexampled growth of popula- 
tion in the district west of Pennsylvania and north of the 
Ohio River. The South produced only one-eightieth of the 
cheese and dairy products; one-quarter of the wheat, one- 
fifth of the oats, one-tenth of the hay, and half of tlie corn; 
but two-thirds of the swine, five-sixths of the tobacco and 
all of the cane sugar and cotton. The total value of the 
manufactured products indispensable to varied industry — 
agricultural implements, iron in all its forms, steam ma- 
chinery, coal, lumber, flour and meal, leather, all sorts of 
cloth, boots, shoes, nails, paper, ink, and the like — was valued 
at the South at about seventy-five million dollars, about one- 



292 THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 

tenth of the value of the products of the North. The grand 
total of all Northern products, $1,730,330,000, was eleven times 
greater than that of the South, $155,531,000. Two and one- 
half times as many fighting men ! Eleven times the ability to 
produce everything needed for the prosecution of a war ! 

How could the Southern leaders with such facts staring 
them in the face begin a war with the only district within 
three thousand miles of them capable of supplying them with 
the manufactured articles they must have or of buying the 
only things they had to sell? Because they believed Cotton 
was King ! For the best part of a century it had been dinned 
into American ears that the one absolutely indLspensable thing 
upon which American prosperity rested was the possession of 
a medium of exchange with Europe. Cotton had been the 
only commodity the country had ever itself produced which 
had in any degree proved adequate, and in 1860 it was nearly 
fifty per cent of the total exports of the country and itself 
exceeded by twenty-five per cent the total exports of the 
North. In addition, the exports of manufactured goods 
which the North did make were believed to be dependent on 
the use of Southern cotton in the New England looms. With 
the proceeds of the sale of cotton in New England and in 
Europe, the South bought manufactured goods from New 
England, iron from Pennsylvania, food from the "West. The 
Southern leaders could not credit, as a supposition even, that 
the North could avoid bankruptcy in case a war should de- 
prive her at one blow of her raw material, her medium of ex- 
change with Europe, and her market for manufactured goods 
in the South. And if the North could or would, was Europe 
willing to allow a war between the North and South to bring 
her looms to a standstill and turn the English and French 
operatives into the streets to starve? Where else was nearly 
ninety million dollars' worth of cotton to come from? The 
American market for European goods was by no means es- 
sential to European manufacturers ; the raw material, cotton, 
was indispensable. 

That the South did not produce the necessities of life, much 



THE CAUSES OF SECESSION 293 

less the essentials for the prosecution of a war, the leaders 
well knew. But food, leather, salt, medicines, iron, arms, 
lead, powder could all be secured in Europe in exchange for 
cotton. The possibility of effective blockade or of real inter- 
ference by the Northern navy with the Southern freedom of 
intercourse with Europe, the leaders scouted. They counted 
definitely on the ease and rapidity of transportation. They 
also expected the foreign nations to recognize the new con- 
federacy as an independent nation with promptitude and 
despatch as soon as the alternative of recognition or no cot- 
ton was appreciated.^* As for food, mules, lead, leather, 
those could all be had in Missouri and in the Northwest, 
which was tied fast to the South by the Mississippi and its 
tributaries, and was effectually cut off from the Eastern 
coast by the mountains. The West might hesitate and haggle 
but in the end it would be forced by circumstances to join 
the South. ^^ The adherence of the West, and recognition 

14 "The policy, or at least part of the policy of South Carolina ia, 
after staving off war by non-action, to hold back cotton — omnipotent 
cotton — reduce the supplies in manufacturing countries — stop the 
thousands and tens of thousands of manufactories in the North and in 
Europe — until, by absolute force of circumstances, people will be driven 
to acknowledge the independence of the Confederacy," Quoted from 
the Baltimore American by the St. Louis Republican, Jan. 16, 1861. 

15 Mr. Uriel Wright in the Missouri Convention assembled to decide 
upon secession, said in March, 1861: "I see clearly that their [the 
Southern leaders'] idea is to secure the breadstuflfs and provisions of 
the valley of the West, and get their manufactured goods from England. 
There is the whole desire. That is the desire and that is the wish that 
precipitated the cotton states into a revolution. It will be a formida- 
ble idea to meet in a readjustment. These people — I mean the leaders 
— have been in earnest about this matter for a great many years. Tlie 
idea started in South Carolina under the dominion and power of such 
minds as McDufRe, Calhoun, and Hayne. . . . Still, in spite of the 
temptation — the glittering temptation — of a Southern Republic, whose 
basis is cotton, and whose policy is free trade with Europe and pro- 
visions from us — ... I am satisfied . . . that ephemeral power will 
fade away into thin air." Journal of the Missotiri Convention, 211. 

Sam Tate, president of the Memphis and Cbarleston R. R., wrote to 
a prominent official in Richmond on May 1, 1861: "There are no pro- 
visions in the South — not enough for a full supply for 60 days. [And 
this was May 1861!] How are we to get it? The Government at 
Washington is making important arrangements to take St. Louis and 



294 THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 

from Europe; the commercial crisis in the North evoked by 
the loss of the southern market, of cotton as raw material, 
and as a medium of exchange with Europe; the strength of 
the States' rights party at the North, and of the Northern 
democrats, would probably prevent the North from fighting 
at all, and bring about a peaceful separation. In fact, the 
Southern leaders were confident that the North would not 
dare fight; it was widely reported that Jefferson Davis had 
declared himself ready to drink all the blood that would be 
spilled over secession.^*' The control by the South of the 
Federal government would give them in the event of Lin- 
coln's election fully four months for actual preparation; 
would enable the Secretary of War to move into the South- 
ern arsenals, where they could be seized, the supplies of 
arms and powder owned by the Federal government, which 
would thoroughly equip the first Southern armies put into 
the field and deprive the Northern troops of the necessary 
equipment. If still the war persisted, aid would come from 
Europe by the time it was needed. 

Constitutional, traditional, historical defenses were not 
far to seek. Nullification, secession, States' rights had been 
commonly proclaimed in every part of the country too^often 
and too recently to allow a scintilla of doubt as to the le- 
gality of secession to linger in Southern minds. Indeed, the 
belief in the validity of secession as a constitutional right w^as 
so widespread at the North as to make it doubtful for months 

close the Mississippi effectually against us from Cairo up. This cuts 
off our last hope for a full supply of provisions and lead. By efficient 
action now we can save the State of Missouri to the South and keep 
open an outlet to an abundant supply of provisions. . . . The first thing 
we know we will be out of powder, lead, and percussion caps. They 
can be had through Cuba alone at this time." Rebellion Records, 
Series IV, Vol. I, 276. 

William G. Eliot, of St, Louis, wrote later: "I doubt if the South- 
ern Confederacy would have been attempted if the loss of that State 
[Missouri] had been foreseen, and the plans of rebellion were as care- 
fully laid at Jefferson City (of which there is now proof) as at Charles- 
ton." C. C. Eliot, Life of W. G. Eliot, 163. 

]« Personal Memoirs of U. 8. Grant, I, 178. Ed. of 1903. See also 
Robin's Sherman, 56. 



THE CAUSES OF SECESSION 295 

whether the people would support the Federal government, 
if war should break out upon that issue. From the fathers 
of the Revolutionary and Constitutional periods and in par- 
ticular from Calhoun's writings, Hayne's speeches, and the 
incidents in South Carolina in 1828, the leaders of the South 
drew ample confirmation and justification of the step. 

When the decision to secede was really taken, it is impos- 
sible to demonstrate without defining more accurately what is 
meant by secession. If we mean by secession the determina- 
tion to establish a second confederacy based upon slave terri- 
tory, the decision was taken in all probability some time just 
previous to the Mexican War and was constantly in the minds 
of the Southern leaders as a remedy to be applied with all 
speed whenever the probability of the loss of their control 
of the Federal government seemed imminent. Without that 
control it was generally conceded that the Constitution and 
all the statutes concerning slavery would be a dead letter at 
the North, and that, to continue the connection after that 
moment, would be merely to expose the South to the definitely 
hostile legislation which none of them doubted the North 
would at once utilize Congress to pass. On March 4, 1850, 
Calhoun solemnly stated the alternatives in the Senate: 
"There should be an open and manly avowal on all sides as 
to what is intended to be done. ... If you who represent the 
stronger portion, cannot agree to settle them [the issues] on 
the broad principle of justice and duty, say so; and let the 
States we both represent agree to separate and part in peace. 
If you are unwilling we should part in peace, tell us so; and 
we shall know what to do when you reduce the question to 
submission or resistance. If you remain silent, you will 
compel us to infer by your acts what you intend."" Con- 
ventions in the South in 1849 and during the subsequent dec- 
ade openly discussed the issue and as openly decided in favor 
of the legality and expediency of secession.^* State cam- 

17 Works of Calhoun, IV, 572-3. 

18 Hodgson's Cradle of the Confederacy is wholly devoted to these 
abortive attempts at organized secession before 1860. 



296 THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 

paigns were fought on the desirability of continuing longer 
in the Union ; and the breach by the North of the Compromise 
of 1850, the failure to observe the Fugitive-Slave Law, the 
refusal to "repeal" the Missouri Compromise, to accept the 
Dred Scott ' ' decisions, ' ' and the like, were continually brought 
forward in State after State and in general conventions as 
eventualities which would be regarded as the signal for seces- 
sion, as proof that Southern control of the Federal govern- 
ment was already lost. The election of 1856, like that of 1860, 
was fought over the issue of union or disunion. Senator 
Mason declared that in the event of the election of Fremont 
"but one course remains for the South — immediate, absolute, 
eternal separation." Buchanan, the Democratic candidate, 
wrote in a private letter, ' ' I consider that all incidental ques- 
tions are comparatively of little importance in the presi- 
dential election when compared with the grand and appalling 
issue of union or disunion. "^^ As in 1850, and later in 
1860, the Southern leaders were assembled in 1856 concert- 
ing the final measures in case secession should become neces- 
sary. Soon after 1850, the numerous military academies 
founded at the South and the resort to them of the youth of the 
planter class was significant proof of Southern determination. 
Secession was certainly not hatched in a corner; it was no 
secret conspiracy. The intentions of the Southern leaders 
had been solemnly and publicly announced so many times in 
such open fashion that the North had really come to believe 
them simply the cry. of "Wolf, wolf." In actuality, the 
election of Abraham Lincoln as President of the United States 
was merely the signal for secession, not its cause. At the 
South this was well understood. "When, in the gray dawn, 
the waiting crowds in the streets of Charleston saw on the 
bulletins the complete returns and knew that Lincoln was 
elected, a rousing cheer spontaneously rose to their lips for a 
Southern Confederacy. 

19 See these and other quotations on this same point from most of 
the leaders, collected by Mr. Rhodes in History of the United States, 
II, 204-210; 227; and passim. 



XXII 

SECESSION AND CO^EPROMISE 

A MONTH or more before the presidential election of 1860, 
a convention of Southern leaders was in session and the pro- 
cedure of secession was thoroughly discussed, if not definitely 
agreed upon. It was apparent that each State must act indi- 
vidually and that formal action would take time; that the 
North would fight the leaders did not believe; and active 
preparation for that eventuality was postponed. In Alabama 
and South Carolina, conventions were called and sat just 
prior to election day to discuss the relations of the State to the 
Federal government. Before noon of the day following the 
election of Lincoln, the palmetto flag had been raised in 
Charleston amid ecstatic cheers; the legislature was taking 
measures for the military defense of the State; and the Fed- 
eral officers had resigned. A convention was called for De- 
cember 17 to act upon the crisis. This was of course defiance, 
and the leaders now proposed to wait until the attitude of the 
President and of the North became clear. Buchanan, after 
consultation with the Attorney General, made up his mind 
and advised Congress when it met in December of his de- 
termination to take no active steps. He declared secession 
unconstitutional and the election of Lincoln no valid excuse 
for the active measures undertaken in South Carolina against 
the Federal government, but he denied to both President and 
Congress any right to oppose secession by force. Practically 
this meant, and so the Southern leaders read it, that the 
South had until March 4 to complete its plans and organiza- 
tion without interference from Washington. 

The desire to achieve their purpose wdthout war, the belief 
tiiat the North would in the end decline to fight, the practical 

297 



298 THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 

certainty that they would not be actively opposed for several 
months caused the Southerners to act deliberately and to 
postpone for the time further overt measures. On December 
20, South Carolina seceded and sent commissioners to "Wash- 
ington to treat with the Federal government. On January 5, 
a caucus of Southern leaders met at Washington in which the 
final measures were agreed upon. The States were advised 
to secede individually, to arm the militia with the weapons 
in the Federal arsenals and to seize the Federal forts in 
their territory; and a general convention was called to meet 
at Montgomery, Alabama, in February. With dramatic 
speeches and defiant declarations that they had been wronged, 
the Senators and Representatives of most of the Southern 
States "seceded" from Congress during January; six States 
adopted ordinances of secession during the same month and 
seized the Federal forts, arsenals, supplies, and property 
within their borders. There was much rejoicing; bells rung, 
guns fired, and a general carnival in the streets. In some 
States, the ordinance was solemnly signed before excited 
throngs in the open air. 

February was occupied with the organization of the seven 
seceded States into a new confederacy. The delegates met on 
February 4 and impressed A. H. Stephens as the "ablest, 
soberest, most intelligent and conservative body" he had ever 
been in. Within a few days, they agreed upon an amended 
form of the Federal Constitution which explicitly provided 
for States' sovereignty, for the "delegation" of legislative 
powers, and for the recognition of slavery as a permanent in- 
stitution. The President's term was made six years and he 
was to be ineligible for a second term; the imposition of a 
tariff and appropriations for internal improvements were ex- 
plicitly forbidden; and a serious attempt was made to intro- 
duce certain administrative reforms which the experience of 
seventy years had shown to be desirable. On February 9, 
Jefferson Davis and Alexander H. Stephens were chosen 
temporary President and Vice-President, and were formally 
inaugurated on the eighteenth, though the Constitution was 



SECESSION AND COMPROMISE 299 

not ratified by all the States and did not become permanently 
binding until March 11. Toombs became Secretary of State 
and Walker, Secretary of War. 

The real purpose of the new government and the "cause" 
of secession were proclaimed by Stephens in a notable speech. 
"The new Constitution," he said at Savannah, "has put at 
rest forever all the agitating questions relating to our peculiar 
institution, African slavery as it exists among us — the proper 
status of the negroes in our form of civilization. This was 
the immediate cause of the late rupture and revolution. . . . 
Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite 
ideas : its foundations are laid, its corner-stone rests upon the 
great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man ; that 
slavery — subordination to the superior race — is his natural 
and normal condition. This, our New Government, is the 
first in the history of the world, based upon this great phys- 
ical, philosophical, and moral truth." ^ 

Meanwhile, at the North and in the border States, Vir- 
ginia, Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri, all was consterna- 
tion, turmoil, hesitation. A feverish anxiety to compromise 
and at all hazards avoid war was the dominant note. 
Scarcely had the intentions of South Carolina become plain 
when offers of compromise appeared in the North. Both 
Houses of Congress promptly appointed committees to con- 
sider the subject and upon them were placed the most 
prominent Northern and Southern men in each House. The 
Senate Committee introduced the Crittenden Compromise 
which provided for constitutional amendments to fulfil the 
Missouri Compromise by the exclusion of slavery from the 
Territories north of 36° 30'; to provide that when new States 
were to be admitted, the people should decide upon the ques- 
tion of slavery or freedom ; but wath a clause formally recog- 
nizing slavery as an institution entitled to protection by the 
Territorial and Federal governments. The amendments fur- 
ther explicitly deprived Congress of any power to interfere 
with the transportation of slaves to the Territories, or in any 

1 Putnam, Rebellion Record, I, Documents, 45. 



300 THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 

way to effect the status of slavery in the States where it ex- 
isted. Unless the Federal government returned the escaped 
slaves, it should reimburse the owner for his loss. The House 
Committee later proposed amendments safeguarding slavery 
in the States, the repeal of the Personal Liberty Laws, the 
revision of the Fugitive-Slave Laws, and the admission of New 
Mexico mth or without slavery. Nor were the attempts at 
compromise confined to Congress. Late in December a con- 
ference of the Governors of seven of the largest Northern 
States met in New York and agreed to recommend to their 
legislatures the repeal of the Personal Liberty Laws. Had it 
been at all clear that this would have satisfied the South, every 
Northern State would probably have been willing so to act. 
The New York Legislature proposed to emancipate the slaves 
at national expense and deport them to Africa. After the 
publication of the Confederate Constitution, there was some 
sentiment in the North in favor of a general adoption of 
that document by the Northern States as the easiest way of 
settling the difficulty. In February, a conference, called by 
Virginia to discuss compromise, met at Washington, at which 
delegates from all the Northern and border States were pres- 
ent. Toward the close of the month, it recommended to Con- 
gress a series of proposals similar to the Crittenden Com- 
promise, though somewhat less drastic in language. These 
were discussed in the Senate and attempts were made to re- 
fer them to separate State conventions and even to a national 
constitutional convention. 

As it became more and more apparent that the formal pro- 
posals were not meeting with Southern approval, the North- 
ern leaders privately offered the Southerners in January to 
pass at once an act organizing New Mexico as a slave State, if 
the people of the district would vote in favor of it. This 
was refused as inadequate on the ground that it did not cover 
the territory hereafter to be acquired. In February, the 
Northern congressmen offered to organize at once the rest of 
the Louisiana Purchase without any provision regarding 
slavery ; to pay for all fugitive slaves not returned ; to punish 



SECESSION AND COMPROMISE 301 

drastically any repetition of John Brown's attempts to rouse 
the slaves; to repeal all state legislation inimical to the Fugi- 
tive-Slave Act. They even offered an amendment expressly 
forbidding Congress to interfere with the status of slavery in 
the States. 

The reason for these frenzied attempts to meet the objec- 
tions alleged by the Ordinances of Secession is to be found in 
the realization, now keen at the North, of the commercial bene- 
fits of the Federal union and, above all, the splendor of na- 
tionality. The vision, which had entranced the fathers of the 
Republic and the framers of the Constitution, which Webster 
had so eloquently described, had now become a general posses- 
sion. The North was utterly unwilling to renounce it in 
favor of the older ideal of two confederacies. The calmer 
minds, too, saw that the South was not unanimous upon the 
issue of secession: that the overt acts had been the work of 
the leaders and of conventions rather than of spontaneous agi- 
tation. The size of the vote against secession in several of the 
States made many conclude (and among them, Seward) that 
the numerical majority at the South was actually in favor of 
Union. They saw also the lack in the South of the neces- 
sities for the prosecution of a war and they could not be- 
lieve that the leaders really proposed to try the issue of 
arms. Another large section in the North believed sin- 
cereh' in States' rights, in the legality and validity of 
secession, and declined to admit the existence of a power 
in the Federal government to coerce a State. To them, un- 
less a compromise could be agreed upon, the destruction of 
the Union was inevitable, for the South would secede beyond 
a peradventure and leave the North no resource but to ac- 
cept its action. In the border States, this party was par- 
ticularly strong and the sentiment against the constitutionality 
of coercion almost universal. 

The Southern leaders seem, however, to have had from the 
first no intention of compromising. Until all should be 
ready, until they w'ere assured that peaceful secession was 
impossible, they were resolved not to push matters to the ex- 



302 THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 

treme, but they were equally determined not to yield short 
of the complete legalization and protection of slavery. This 
attitude was clear as early as November. ' ' I am daily becom- 
ing more confirmed," wrote A. H. Stephens on November 30, 
1860, "that all efforts to save the Union will be unavailing. 
The truth is, our leaders and public men who have taken hold 
of this question do not desire to continue it on any terms. 
They do not wish any redress of wrongs ; they are dis-unionists 
per se, and avail themselves of present circumstances to press 
their objects." His opinion explains the formal statement 
of the Southern Senators, made public on December 14, when 
the arguments regarding compromise were as yet hardly be- 
gun in either House. "The argument is exhausted. ... In 
our judgment, the Republicans are resolute in the purpose to 
grant nothing that will or ought to satisfy the South." The 
only remedy was the formation of a confederacy. On De- 
cember 22, Toombs of Georgia telegraphed his constituents 
that he had put the test fairly and frankly, that the Repub- 
licans had decided against the claims of the South, and that 
nothing was left but instant secession. This and other inci- 
dents soon convinced many that the South did not desire any 
settlement other than separation. Lincoln too was against 
compromise. "The tug has to come," he wrote, "and better 
now than later." "A year will not pass till we shall have to 
take Cuba as a condition upon which they will stay in the 
Union." And indeed, the sober, thoughtful men of both 
parties had long been coming to the opinion that "a proposi- 
tion which in effect requires either party to surrender its con- 
victions — to act in direct opposition to its principles — is not a 
compromise." Reluctantly on March 2, the leaders in Con- 
gress conceded the final defeat of the only proposition which 
had ever obtained much popular support, the Crittenden Com- 
promise. 

Though compromise had definitely failed, it was by no 
means clear that war would break out. The inauguration of 
Lincoln passed off quietly, and the new President's address, 
though firm and determined, was yet conservative in tone. 



RECESSION AND COMPROMISE 303 

Nor during March did the situation outwardly change. The 
drilling and arming went on at the South ; the clamor against 
coercion continued at the North, where a few States only- 
mobilized their militia. Lincoln seemed as lacking in energy 
and decision as had Buchanan. The reasons are not far to 
seek. There were first of all dissensions in the Cabinet: 
Seward, and Chase, Lincoln's rivals for the nomination, had 
fully expected to take control of policy, and time was needed 
to convince Lincoln of their intentions and for him to show 
them conclusively who was actually President. A graver dif- 
ficulty lay in the harrowing doubt whether or not the North 
would support the Government in an active policy of coercion 
of the seceded States. As yet the border States, with Arkan- 
sas and North Carolina, had not seceded and their hostility to 
a policy of coercion was only too manifest. Whether decisive 
action caused them actively to join the new Confederacy, or 
merely to decline to assist the Federal government, the result 
would be equally disastrous. In the first eventuality, the new 
Confederacy, thus strengthened, might conceivably be strong 
enough to win the war ; in the second, a great strip of neutral 
territory would be interposed between the Northern and 
Southern States, which would either prevent the Northern 
armies from reaching the South or would compel them to oc- 
cupy the border States as if they were actually hostile terri- 
tory. Washington would be at once isolated from the loyal 
States, and it seemed scarcely probable that the Union would 
survive its capture. 

Nor was it by any means clear that the North would sup- 
port a war. The New York Tribune, edited by Greeley, by 
far the most influential paper in the East and the only paper 
much read in the Northwest, had for months openly advocated 
peaceful secession : ' ' Let the erring sisters go in peace. ' ' The 
Mayor of New York had recommended the secession of that 
city from the State and the opening of her ports to the world. 
Late in January at a great public meeting in New York, a 
very influential man declared against coercion and was wildly 
applauded, while the Republican mayor of Philadelphia had 



304 THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 

pronounced publicly, amid very evident expressions of ap- 
proval, against the hostility towards slavery. In March and 
April, the municipal elections in the North showed heavy 
losses from the Republican majorities of the previous fall. 
In Boston, in the home of Anti-Slavery, the Twenty-ninth 
Annual Session of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society 
was broken up by a disorderly crowd and the Society next day 
disbanded. Indeed, it became evident that secession had al- 
most produced a new alignment of parties. Until the attitude 
of the majority in the North became clearer, Lincoln had no 
intention of calling for troops. 

Nor had Davis any intention of taking steps hostile to the 
Federal government until it was definitely established that 
negotiation, diplomacy, compromise, or whatever other forms 
of mediation or adjustment were available, had been entirely 
exhausted. The new Confederacy w^as of course desirous to 
secure recognition of its independence and sovereignty with- 
out resort to arms, and apparently deemed such recognition 
possible and probable, for in IMarch commissioners appeared 
in Washington who desired formally to submit credentials to 
Seward and to discuss with him the relations of the two ' ' con- 
federacies." Seward declined to commit himself or the ad- 
ministration by even communicating with them in his official 
capacity, but for some three weeks the inability of the Cabinet 
to decide to act upon their case one way or the other led the 
Southerners to believe that events and forces were working 
in their favor. The more warlike at the North even began 
to fear that the predictions of the Southerners would come 
true and that the North would not fight. 

As usual, the larger issue presented itself in more concrete 
form. The Federal forts in Charleston harbor were gar- 
risoned by Major Anderson and Federal troops. "When South 
Carolina seceded, Anderson evacuated the fort and batteries 
on the shore and posted himself in Fort Sumter, which was lo- 
cated on an island and commanded the ship channels in and 
out of the harbor. Naturally, to the South Carolinians, drunk 
with the wine of their new found liberty, his presence was of- 



SECESSION AND COMPROMISE 305 

fensive and they had earlier protested to Buchanan and de- 
manded the surrender of the fort. They had even dared fire 
upon a Federal supply ship which had attempted in January 
to reprovision the fort and which had in consequence re- 
turned without accomplishing its object. When Lincoln be- 
came President, the situation in the fort was critical: it was 
surrounded and commanded by the batteries erected on shore ; 
the food was running low; and its surrender, reinforcement, 
or provisioning was a question of moment because the 
Southerners had repeatedly given warning that either of the 
latter would be treated as the signal for war. After weeks of 
indecision, Lincoln finally determined to provision the fort; 
he could not see the Union abandoned without at least trying 
the issue and certainly the provisioning of the fort was not 
from any reasonable point of view a hostile act, however the 
Southerners might choose to regard it. The commissioners of 
the Confederacy promptly sent a letter to Seward declaring 
the act a declaration of war ; and at daybreak on April 12, the 
South Carolina batteries began the bombardment of Fort 
Sumter. The structure was old, and ill-equipped for re- 
sistance ; and, after it had been shot to pieces, the powder ex- 
hausted and further resistance made useless, Anderson sur- 
rendered and evacuated it with the honors of war. 

The sensation in the North is indescribable : blind rage and 
a desire to wipe out the insult to the flag replaced the luke- 
warmness and hesitation hitherto characteristic. The una- 
nimity of sentiment in favor of war was as remarkable as it 
was sudden. Douglas at once waited on the President and 
promised his entire support. The publication of his message 
to the country had tremendous effect, A great crowd went 
out to his home in Chicago ; he addressed them from a balcony, 
and besought them, his voice choked with emotion, to stand 
for the Union. "There can be no neutrals in this war; only 
patriots or traitors." Buchanan declared war inevitable and 
predicted that the North to a man would support the govern- 
ment. 

He was right. On April 15, Lincoln called for seventy-five 



306 THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 

thousand volunteers; on the next day the Massachusetts regi- 
ments mobilized in Boston, and on the following day, the Sixth 
Massachusetts left for Washington. Passing through Balti- 
more, the troops were mobbed by the Secessionists who con- 
trolled the town, but succeeded in getting through to the 
national capitol. Behind them the wires were cut and the 
railroad bridges burned. Maryland had risen and Washing- 
ton was isolated! 

The news came that Virginia had seceded; that Harper's 
Ferry with its arsenals and its control of the Potomac and 
Shenandoah Valley had been evacuated and the Navy Yard 
at Gosport destroyed. The legislatures of New York and Ohio 
voted large sums for the support of the government ; a quarter 
of a million people held a rally in Union Square, New York, 
and solemnly pledged themselves to the defense of the Union, 
and the departure for Washington of the famous Seventh 
New York Regiment was the signal for scenes of enthusiasm 
and determination which beggar description. Rhode Island 
troops were already on the road. But the anxious President, 
marooned in Washington, in receipt of only occasional mes- 
sages by couriers, could not believe in the actuality of this 
support. "I begin to believe there is no North," he said to 
the Sixth Massachusetts. ''The Seventh Regiment is a myth. 
Rhode Island is another. You are the only real thing." The 
defenselessness of Washington was so apparent, the nioral re- 
sult of its loss so clear, that the w^atchw^ord became *'0n to 
Washington!" Then Butler's Eighth Massachusetts Regi- 
ment landed at Annapolis, ignoring the protests of the Gover- 
nor of Maryland against such an ''invasion" of a sovereign 
State without permission, repaired the railroad trains disabled 
by the Marylanders, put the baggage on the cars, and marched 
on to Washington, rebuilding the track as they went. Over 
the same route, troops soon poured in; the connection with 
the North had been established and Washington was safe. 

The city had never been in any real danger. The Con- 
federates were not ready to move. In reality, the panic in 
Washington was equaled only by that in Richmond on Sun- 



SECESSION AXD COMPROMISE 307 

day, April 21, Word came that a Federal gunboat was steam- 
ing up the river. Bells rang; the congregations rushed out 
of the churches to arms ; and not till late at night did the alarm 
subside and the people become thoroughly convinced of their 
safety. Meanwhile, in Charleston, the greatest joy reigned. 
Russell, the famous war correspondent of the London Times, 
wrote of "crowds of armed men singing and promenading 
the streets, the battle blood running through their veins — 
that hot oxygen which is called 'the flush of victory' on the 
cheek; restaurants full, reveling in barrooms, clubrooms 
crowded, orgies and carousing in tavern and private house, in 
tap-room from cabaret — do\\Ti narrow alleyways, in the broad 
high-way. Sumter has set them distraught ; never was such 
a victory' ; never such brave lads; never such a fight; ... it 
is a bloodless Waterloo or Solferino. ' ' ^ 

2 Diary, 98. 



XXIII 

THE CIVIL WAR AS A MILITARY EVENT 

The policy of passive resistance promptly adopted by the 
Confederacy had its solid basis in diplomacy and statesman- 
ship rather than in military considerations; but its military 
result was to throw the war into the Southern States, to force 
the North to become the ag^essor, and made the story of the 
war the tale of the progress of the Northern "conquest." 
The most important factor, then, in the military history of 
the Civil War is the strategical geography of the United 
States south of Mason and Dixon's line. This vast territory 
— about one-third of the total area of the country to-day, 
then nearly two-thirds of the settled States, — is divided by 
the Alleghany Mountains into two unequal parts, each of 
which promptly became a theater of war. During the first 
three years and more a series of simultaneous campaigns took 
place, all directed toward the occupation of the South, but 
carried on by Northern armies in the West and East which be- 
cause of the mountains did not attempt to keep in touch with 
each other or carry out concerted movements. The cam- 
paigns in Virginia and the c'ampaigns in the West were 
aimed at different strategic points. This same difficulty of 
communication through the Alleghanies, which so hampered 
the concerted action of the invaders, also made extremely dif- 
ficult any cooperation of the Southern armies in either field 
and in particular clogged the wheels of the machinery in- 
tended to provide Lee's army in Virginia with supplies and 
munitions of war. Many of the first militaiy movements 
were devoted to attempts to establish or prevent conjunction 
of forces in both armies, and it is not perhaps going too far 

308 



THE CIVIL WAR AS A MILITARY EVENT 309 

to say that the character of the war as a whole was the result 
of the existence of the Alleghany Llountains. 

The fact that Washington was situated a comparatively 
short distance from Richmond, the expectation entertained by 
both sides of a sudden collapse of the opposition under so 
striking a reverse as the seizure of its capital, the belief of 
each that the other was unprepared to resist sudden invasion, 
all combined to induce both to begin the war in Virginia and 
to conduct operations there with especial pertinacity in the 
face of all obstacles and reverses. Indeed, the enthusiasts on 
both sides could not comprehend why their general could not 
cross those few miles of territory and so end the War. The 
fact that the campaigns in Virginia, with the exception of a 
few brilliant successes for both sides, were for both a long 
series of striking reverses, which left the contending armies 
in the fall of 1864 no nearer the accomplishment of cither's 
desire than when the War began, is the most significant aspect 
of this part of the War and is explained largely, if not en- 
tirely, by the character of the country. Military critics have 
unreservedly praised the generalship of Lee and have de- 
clared that his ability alone maintained the defense in Vir- 
ginia and therefore prolonged the War for four years. Lee's 
defense, however, was based chiefly upon a detailed knowl- 
edge of the ground and a most skilful use of the natural ad- 
vantages it afforded him. 

Virginia is a plain, sloping southeast from the Blue Ridge 
Mountains to Chesapeake Bay and intersected by numerous 
parallel rivers, of which the Potomac, the Rappahannock, 
York, and James are the most important. So low is the land 
near the Bay that for a considerable distance the shore of 
the Bay and the sides of the rivers are marshy, and land firm 
enough for army manoeuvers begins some miles from shore 
about the meridian of Fredericksburg. The possible field of 
war was thus narrowed and limited by nature. The rivers, 
moreover, all of them lying athwart an invader's path, af- 
forded the Northern armies the maximum number of diffi- 
culties in their march overland on Richmond, and gave the 



310 THE RISE OF THE AJVIERICAN PEOPLE 

Confederates the maximum opportunities for defense and 
for assault at moments when the nature of the ground near 
the river fords made the deploying of any considerable part 
of the Northern army hazardous in the extreme. The dis- 
trict Lee had to guard was limited, and Nature herself had 
provided fortifications for him and obstacles for his enemies. 
These same rivers had been since colonial times the high- 
ways of Virginia, for all commodities were moved to the Bay 
for export and were rarely sent overland from one part of 
the State to another. There had never been developed, there- 
fore, any system of roads running north and south which was 
of real service to either side. Days were spent in making 
roads across river bottoms, swamps, and morasses, where 
more soldiers died of malarial fevers, dysentery, and camp 
diseases than were killed in battle. Then this part of Vir- 
ginia had been normally devoted to growing tobacco; agri- 
culture had declined; and food and fuel were scarce. Both 
armies were speedily dependent upon supplies brought to 
them and found it extremely difficult to procure in Virginia 
enough horses, mules, or wagons even, to get the supplies from 
the railroad to the camps. The invaders were compelled to 
carry everything. The war in the East indeed soon de- 
pended for its prosecution at all upon the smooth working of 
the immensely complicated administrative machine required 
to supply and move the Northern army under the geograph- 
ical conditions. In fact, the comparative inaction of the first 
two years was almost entirely due to the imperative need 
of a machinery which only time and experience could render 
really efficient; and the operations undertaken were such as 
the limited resources of that machinery seemed to render pos- 
sible. McClellan's continual complaint was that he was not 
given enough men properly equipped for the task assigned 
him. To the geographical difficulty of fighting at all in Vir- 
ginia may be assigned much of the responsibility for the fail- 
ure of the Union armies to wage war more successfully in the 
East. 

This same configuration of the field of war, however, gave 



THE CIVIL WAR AS A MILITARY E\^NT 311 

both sides enormous natural advantages of which they were 
not slow to avail themselves, but which, as used by Lee, af- 
forded the Confederates vastly more assistance than they did 
the Federals. The control of Chesapeake Bay and of the 
rivers gave the Federal gunboats and transports such ready 
access to the interior that the Union generals could land their 
armies where they pleased, in nearly any part of eastern Vir- 
ginia and could maintain them there by provisions from the 
fleet. The early seizure of Maryland gave the Union con- 
trol of a second side of the field of war, and maintained the 
indispensable connections with the North and West. This, 
however, was rather a possible advantage snatched from the 
Confederates than a positive assistance to the Federals. 

Of a very different sort was the assistance derived by the 
Confederates from the Shenandoah Valley. The Blue Ridge 
occupied one whole side of the field of war and the numerous 
gaps made entrance to it or exit from it easy for both armies. 
Its northern end debouched in Pennsylvania and made it a 
protecting screen for an invasion of the North by the Confed- 
erates; from its center an army advancing through Manassas 
or Centerville and across Bull Run could menace Washing- 
ton directly; while an army fleeing from pursuit could slip 
in one gap and no one know from which of the many others 
it would emerge. From this vantage point Jackson, Stuart, 
and Early threatened Washington or harried the rear of the 
Union armies till the last year of the War. Through it Lee 
twice attempted to invade the North; in its defiles, he twice 
eluded his pursuers, who were between him and the Confeder- 
ate lines, and reached Richmond in safety. Aside from the 
beaten track of the contending armies, the pursuits of peace 
long went on uninterrupted and all through the years from 
1861 to 1864 priceless loads of supplies were drawn from the 
fertile fields of the Valley for Lee's army. In addition, the 
Valley enabled the Confederates to threaten the communica- 
tions of the North with the West via the Potomac River Valley 
and the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, which crossed the river 
and the Valley roads at Harper's Ferry. 



312 THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 

Indeed Harper's Ferry, Manassas, and Centerville, con- 
trolling the most direct roads from the Valley to Washing- 
ton; and Fortress Monroe at the mouth of the James Eiver 
were the only strategic points in the triangular field of the 
Virginia War. There were in fact no other strategic points 
of first importance to struggle for, and the long campaigns 
were a series of attempts by the Union armies to reach Rich- 
mond by passing a few miles west or east of the point of the 
last rebuff, or, on the part of the Confederates to try once 
more a dash on Washington or on Philadelphia through the 
Shenandoah Valley. The armies were too well matched; the 
valor of each too great ; the skill of the generals too consider- 
able to make the weary years of strife more than a draw. 
The War was not won by the Virginia campaigns, but, as 
Sherman early predicted, by the western armies. 

The Mississippi Valley possessed many strategic points of 
the utmost consequence to the Union. The Ohio River, deep, 
swift, and almost fordless, flowing between steep banks across 
almost the entire width of the country would have been a 
splendid boundary for defense and would have given the Con- 
federates a virtual fortification from which Ohio, Indiana, 
and Illinois could have been harried at will. Missouri con- 
trolled the junction of the Ohio, of the Missouri, and of the 
Illinois with the Mississippi, and paralleled the whole western 
side of the strong Union State of Illinois and the southern 
side of Iowa. Should it join the Confederacy, the South would 
control the whole of the navigable waterways of the Middle 
West and would be provided with splendid roads into the very 
heart of the anti-slavery territory. The loss of Kentucky, 
of West Virginia, and of Missouri to the South in the first 
months of the War was of far greater significance than has 
been supposed. While the military operations concerned with 
their seizure were slight in strategy and of little tactical im- 
portance, the result upon the general position of the South was 
equal to the winning of any single great battle of the War. 
The chance of meeting the Northern armies along the Ohio, 
far from the center of the Confederacy, was lost; and only 



THE CIVIL WAR AS A MILITARY EVENT 313 

Forts Henry and Donelson kept the Federal gunboats out of 
the Tennessee and Cumberland, rivers which were navigable 
indeed far enough south to furnish a waterway into the very 
heart of the Confederacy. With the loss of Missouri went 
the control of the upper IMississippi, the Missouri, and the 
mouth of the Ohio. Practically, the great depth of the 
Mississippi cut the western part of the Confederacy into two 
parts, and prevented armies east of the river from cooperating 
effectively with the troops west of it. The hostility of Mis- 
souri kept Arkansas on the qui vive; while Texas and Louisiana 
were not sufficiently populous to maintain armies, even had 
the character of the country not made military campaigns in 
the marshes and bayous impracticable. From them must 
come supplies and recruits. The field of war in the West 
then was limited by Nature and by circumstances to the land 
south of central Kentucky, west of the mountains, and east of 
the Mississippi. 

The strategic points were chiefly those controlling the lines 
of communication north and south, and east and west. The 
rivers first engaged attention. It became at once clear to the 
Northern generals that the possession of the Mississippi would 
prevent the South from drawing men and supplies from the 
Western States ; and permit the provisioning and relieving of 
the western armies by the North much more safely than the 
railroads would have allowed. The moral effect of its loss 
could not fail to be tremendous. To advance along the Ten- 
nessee and Cumberland Rivers, however, was more likely to 
be decisive, for such a movement menaced the east and west 
connections of the Confederacy. The Civil War was one of 
the first to be fought with aid of the telegraph and railroad, 
and their value as military forces had not been entirely ap- 
preciated. It so happened that while the system of trunk 
lines running in all directions naturally developed by North- 
ern trade were of immense strategic importance, the majority 
of Southern railroad lines were nearly valueless from a mili- 
tary point of \aew. There w^ere only about 9,000 miles of 
track south of Mason and Dixon's line. Most of the lines 



314 THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 

were short spurs to the coast or to a shipping point on some 
river, and the majority of them were single track and narrow 
gauge. From Virginia no trunk line ran south to Charles- 
ton and Atlanta, and there was, indeed, only one trunk line 
running east and west that was likely to be of any conse- 
quence. The proximity of Washington and Richmond had, 
however, determined the chief field of war and the communi- 
cations between Virginia and the country further south be- 
came at once of extraordinary military importance. The 
knowledge that the army in Virginia must be fed and clothed 
from a distance, and must be supported promptly by fresh 
troops in case of disaster, made the Cumberland Gap and 
its roads and railway seem almost as important a point to 
maintain as Richmond itself. Through this Gap ran the Dan- 
ville and Ohio Railroad, the only east and west trunk line 
joining Memphis, Atlanta, Charleston, and Richmond. The 
railroads from Memphis to Richmond and from Charleston 
and Atlanta joined at Chattanooga ; the roads north from Mo- 
bile and New Orleans crossed the line from Memphis to Chat- 
tanooga at or near Corinth. Through the Cumberland Gap 
supplies and troops must reach Lee or they would not reach 
him at all. Through that Gap the Southern army in the 
West must cooperate with the army in Virginia or the two 
would be separated and crushed singly. To maintain that 
connection it was absolutely essential to hold both Corinth and 
Chattanooga. 

The campaign of 1861 in the West having given the Union 
troops the rivers and the States of Missouri, Kentucky, and 
Western Virginia (admitted as a State in 1863), Grant and 
Sherman prepared to move down the Tennessee, cut the rail- 
road at Corinth and at Chattanooga, and thence invade Vir- 
ginia from the rear through the Cumberland Gap. Simul- 
taneously, the gunboat flotilla began the task of reducing the 
Mississippi from the north, while Farragut and the fleet as- 
sailed its mouth at New Orleans. By the end of April 1862, 
the river was in Northern hands as far south as Memphis; 
Grant had taken the forts guarding the passage of the Ten- 



THE CIVIL WAR AS A MILITARY EVENT 315 

nessee and Cumberland, bad fought the battle of Shiloh and 
established himself in southern Tennessee ready to move on 
the railroad connections; and New Orleans was in the hands 
of Fan-agut and Butler. Grant and Sherman were now or- 
dered to take Corinth and Memphis, which was soon done, 
and then were ordered to advance with Porter and his gun- 
boats on Vicksburg down the river ; cooperate with Butler and 
Farragut, advancing up the river; concentrate on Vicksburg 
and so clear the Mississippi of Confederates. Buell, soon re- 
placed by Rosecrans, was at the same time ordered to lay 
siege to Chattanooga. But the success of the earlier mouths 
did not continue and the second half of the year 1862 saw 
the Northern armies everywhere at a standstill : McClellan 
outmanceuvered along the James, nearly defeated at Antietam, 
outgeneraled by Lee's masterly retreat, and the Army of the 
Potomac, now under Burnside, dreadfully cut to pieces at 
Fredericksburg ; in the AVest, all the armies completely check- 
mated. Indeed, not until July 1863, did Grant and Sherman 
prevail at Vicksburg and secure full control of the river, and 
only the massing of troops at Chattanooga some months later 
under Grant, Sherman, and Thomas sufficed to clear the Gap 
and cut the communications of the South with Virginia. By 
this time, a direct line had been finished through North Caro- 
lina and the loss of the Gap was not so decisive a blow as it 
would have been a year earlier. Despite Vicksburg and Chat- 
tanooga, despite the decisive repulse of Lee at Gettysburg in 
July 1863, where his second attempt to invade the North 
was frustrated by Meade, it was clear that in Virginia at 
lejist the Northern army was not appreciably nearer Rich- 
mond, and that the losses in the West would not of themselves 
demolish the Confederacy. Military movements based upon 
the new position of the western armies became indispensable. 
After much discussion, it was decided that Grant should, 
as before, advance on Richmond from the North; Sheridan 
should lay waste the Shenandoah, to prevent its further use 
as a base of operations and of supplies; Sherman should ad- 
vance on Atlanta, march across Georgia to the Sea, proving 



316 THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 

the vulnerability of the Confederacy, and then, advancing 
north through South Carolina and North Carolina, take pos- 
session of the country on whose support Lee was depending, 
and so in the end reach his rear, Thomas was left behind 
in Tennessee to keep Hood's army in sight and prevent his 
interference with Sherman. Every campaign was successful 
except that of Grant, who was thrown back again and again 
by Lee's veterans in a series of battles which experts then 
and since pronounced bad generalship to have fought at all. 
So extended a series of operations, however, consumed the 
whole year and it was not until the spring of 1865 that the 
final moves of the game could be made. Grant, having already 
shifted his operations to the James, closed in on Richmond 
from the east and south; Sherman advanced through North 
Carolina, driving Johnston before him ; Thomas 's army scaled 
the Cumberland Gap, and Lee found himself completely sur- 
rounded. He abandoned Richmond and tried to retreat into 
the mountains, where he could have resisted indefinitely, but 
Grant was too quick for him, and in April 1865, the impend- 
ing surrender took place at Appomattox. 



XXIV 

WHT THE NORTH WON 

The physical and economic preponderance of the North over 
the South — two and one-half times as many fighting men, 
eleven times the productivity ^ — could not fail ultimately to 
decide the issue, should the South be unable to beat the 
Northern armies or to obtain assistance from Europe. From 
the outset this was clear to the Southern leaders. Thanks 
to the Southern sympathies of the Secretary of War, the 
available supplies in the hands of the Federal government 
in 1861 were early seized by the Southerners; thanks to the 
hesitation of the North to believe in the reality of secession, 
the South, it was seen, was drilled, and prepared long before 
the North as a whole had decided to act. The expectation 
was that the Southern armies would be able to defeat the 
Northern and perhaps invade the North itself, while the 
failure of the supply of cotton and the lack of a medium 
of exchange with Europe would bankrupt Northern industry, 
bring Europe to the aid of the South, and compel the West 
to sell to the South on her own terms or face commercial 
ruin. 

The first great blow to the Southern cause was the failure 
of the border States, ]\Iissouri and Kentucky, to secede or 
to defend themselves against the first movements of Union 
troops. The northern boundary of the swift, unfordable Ohio 
was lost to the South. With it w^ent the control of the 
na\'igation of that great river, and the possibility of flanking 
the great State of Illinois, of threatening invasion of the 
West, and of thus weakening the Northern armies before 

1 Supra, p. 290-2. 

317 



318 THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 

Lee. The whole aspect of the War was changed in a moment 
by the loss in May 1861, of Missouri, Kentucky, and West- 
ern Virginia. The next crushing blow fell when it became 
evident that the growth of the railroads in the last decade 
had furnished the Ohio Valley and the Northwest a high- 
way to the Eastern market as cheap and much more rapidly 
traversible than that which the Mississippi had afforded 
them to the South. Moreover, the Eastern market was in- 
finitely larger than the Southern and hence a better place 
in which to sell. The East produced itself most of the manu- 
factured goods the West desired and it was therefore a 
better market to buy in than the South, which could give 
its creditors only exchange on the East or on London and 
could furnish them goods only after the delay and expense 
of importation. In 1850, the lack of adequate facilities for 
transportation to the Eastern markets must perforce have 
compelled the West to depend upon the Southern markets; in 
1860, when the War actually broke out, the West was able 
for the first time to find a market for her own produce in 
the East. 

Although the direct trade with the West helped the East, 
the outbreak of the War was a great economic blow, for the 
South had bought in the winter of 1860-61, with the usual 
arrangement for future payment, three hundred million 
dollars' worth of goods in the North.^ The commencement 
of hostilities of course had the effect of a repudiation of the 
entire debt. The New York firms alone lost one hundred and 
sixty millions as a result of secession; in 1861 six thousand 
Northern firms actually failed for sums over $5,000 and it was 
calculated that an equal number failed for liabilities less than 
that sum, with a total almost one-third as great. The firms 
which did not actually fail were in every way crippled and 
found themselves almost as badly off as during the Panic of 

2 The financial and economic effects of the War have been adequately 
dealt with by Professor E. D. Fite in Social and Industrial Conditions 
During the Civil War. New York, 1910. Chapter V is devoted to the 
commercial conditions here referred to. 



WHY THE NORTH WON 319 

1857. Retrencliments of individual expenses due to fear of 
the War's results or possible failure were responsible for a 
great falling off of sales and for a consequent difficulty among 
M'holesalers and manufacturers of placing new orders. In- 
deed, a commercial crisis of magnitude prevailed throughout 
the North during 1861 and 1862 and it combined with the 
inactivity of the Army of the Potomac and the "unconsti- 
tutional powers" exercised by Lincoln to make the War highly 
unpopular. 

But the War itself set in motion economic forces which 
soon solved the chief difficulties. The army and navy ab- 
sorbed many of the hands thrown out of work. The new 
factories needed to supply the army, the administrative 
offices at Washington, and other multifarious activities 
created by the conflict began graduall}^ to provide for the 
rest. Everything it purchased the government paid for ; 
nearly everything made in the North the government bought ; 
the army, the navy, the clerks and officials of aU. grades and 
ranks received wages or salaries. The expense was enormous ; 
the financing of the war ^ was a great problem on the whole 
skilfully handled ; but the fact must not be overlooked that 
the whole North was employed by the Federal government 
directly or indirectly and was paid for its services at prices 
much higher than any which, had ever been seen in the 
country before. Even those persons who themselves loaned 
the money found the government's bonds good investments 
and received at once high rates of interest. The individuals 
then alive benefited unquestionably from the War. "We are 
only another example," wrote John Sherman, "of a people 
growing rich in a great war. . . . This is not a mere tem- 
porary inflation caused by paper money but is a steady 
progress and rests almost entirely upon actual capital." 
Great sums were spent in luxuries : * " We are clothed in 

8 Any one who hopes to understand the financing of the War must 
read carefully the biographies of Jay Cooke. 

* See the quotations given by Rliodes, History of the United States, 
V, 198-209; and the detailed evidence quoted by Fite, opp. cit., 259-274, 



320 THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 

purple and fine linen," said the Chicago Tribune. The South 
had expected the economic crisis caused by secession to bank- 
rupt the North, and the War was actually making the North 
richer, stronger, larger than before ! This incontestable pros- 
perity enabled the North to bear heavy taxation without 
actually suffering. The great bulk of the cost of the War 
was foisted upon posterity, thanks to the very bonds whose 
sale provided capitalists with a good investment for their 
money in war-time and allowed the government practically to 
subsidize industry at the North on an enormous scale. 

The expectations entertained by the South of assistance 
from England and France did not materialize, chiefly be- 
cause cotton was not king. While large and influential sec- 
tions of the English people favored the Southern cause, the 
government was loath to act until the ability of the Southern 
Confederacy to maintain itself was apparent. Unquestion- 
ably, too, the sagacity and ability of C. F. Adams, the United 
States Ambassador to Great Britain, was instrumental in 
preventing prompt action in favor of the Soutli, and in 
delaying a decision until both England and France concluded, 
as the Confederate agents were compelled to report, that the 
probabilities of the restoration of the Union outweighed "the 
wisdom, energy, and completeness" of the administrative 
system established at Eichmond.^ The expected pressure 
upon foreign governments caused by the need for cotton 
was long postponed, because, in the spring of 1861, the 

with the authorities cited. The New YorJc Independent, June 25, 1864, 
said: "Who at the North would ever think of war, if he had not a 
friend in the army, or did not read the newspapers? Go into Broad- 
way, and we will show you what is meant hy the word 'Extravagance.' 
Ask Stewart about the demand for camel's hair shawls, and he will 
say 'monstrous.' Ask Tiffany what kind of diamonds and pearls are 
called for. He will answer 'the prodigious,' 'as near hen's-egg size as 
possible,' 'price no object.' What kind of carpetings are now wanted? 
None but 'extra.' Brussels and velvets are now used from basement 
to garret." The correspondent of the London Times was amazed to 
read the news in the papers of great losses at the front and yet find 
that "the signs of mourning were hardly anywhere perceptible; the 
noisy gayety of the town was not abated one jot." Cited by File, 259. 
5 Richardson, Messages and Papers of the Confederacy, II, 53. 



WTIY THE NORTH WON 321 

European manufacturers had nearly a year's supply of cotton 
on hand. Long before this supply was exhausted, the general 
failure of the grain crops throughout Europe caused a de- 
mand for food-stuffs literally unprecedented since the Na- 
poleonic wars.^ England, even then unable to feed herself 
and dependent on importation, found her usual sources of 
supply either non-existent or inadequate and was forced to 
seek some new supply of food. In that very year of Euro- 
pean scarcity, the West harvested the largest crops of its 
history ; ^ the new railroads quickly and cheaply landed the 
crop at New York; whence it was shipped to England and 
found ready sale. The North possessed in fact the only 
available supply of a commodity which Europe needed far 
more than it did cotton.^ The lack of cotton as a medium of 
exchange with Europe was scarcely felt. The Emancipation 
Proclamation, issued in September 1862, to take effect Jan- 
uary 1, 1863, seems to have played an important part in 
deciding the European nations to decline to recognize the 
Confederacy. While the object of the War as stated by 
Lincoln and others was primarily and perhaps exclusively 
to perpetuate the political ties created by the Constitution, 
England and France had felt that the issue was chiefly one 
of expediency and not of principle. When, however, the 
Northern government pledged itself to the principle of eman- 
cipation, public opinion manifested itself too clearly in favor 
of the Union in Europe for the governments to disregard it. 
All hope of recognition was destroyed by the victories of 
Vicksburg and Gettysburg, 

« Tho English wheat crop had averaged about 16 million quarters; 
fell in 18G0 to 13 million, in 1861 to 11 million, and was in 18G2 only 
12 million, and in 1863 only 14 million. Fite, Social and Industrial 
Conditions. 18 note. 

~ The increase of the crop in the loyal States was 40 millions of 
bushels and the cessation of trade with the South added 10 millions 
more, available for export. 

8 W. E. Forster stated in the House of Commons: "When they were 
asked to go to war for merely selfish purposes, to procure cotton, it 
was allowable to ask, 'What would be the cost of the war in corn ?' " 
Cited by Fite, p. 21. 



322 THE RISE OF THE AI^IERICAN PEOPLE 

Meanwhile, the expectation that the South would be able 
to buy in Europe with King Cotton nearly if not quite 
everything she would require also was crushed by the totally 
unexpected efficiency of the blockade of Southern ports 
established by the Northern navy. Although the South had 
neither navy nor merchant marine and had shipped her cotton 
to Europe in Northern or English bottoms, she knew that the 
Federal government had comparatively few ships in com- 
mission in the spring of 1861, and deemed it impossible for 
such a handful to blockade in a practical manner a thousand 
miles and more of seacoast. The administration at Washing- 
ton set to work diligently to buy and build ; developed shortly 
armor-clad boats and steam warships, both now introduced 
in naval warfare for the first time, and almost immediately 
"Uncle Sam's webbed feet," in Lincoln's odd but character- 
istic phrase, were leaving their marks "wherever the land 
was wet." It transpired that the numerous harbors along 
the Southern coasts were of no particular value, for only 
a few were connected by railways or roads with the interior, 
and none of them, outside of the Chesapeake region, were 
at the beginning of the War connected with the district where 
supplies were needed. In fact, the magnificent rivers had 
given each little district, each plantation, as it were, its 
own special waterway to the oceanic trade, and an elaborate 
network of roads and railroads had not been needed to ensure 
rapid economic growth. There was no system of intercom- 
munication by land throughout the South which would have 
made one harbor as good a base of communication with 
Europe as another and therefore have rendered effective 
blockade of so many harbors as impossible as it first seemed. 
In reality, the investiture of a very few places closed the 
only ports through which any considerable volume of trade 
had flowed or which possessed any connection by rail with 
the interior. Even had the ports remained open, the de- 
ficiencies of transportation would still have sown formidable 
obstacles in the way of the speedy and regular transmission 
of supplies. The waterways were indeed a detriment to the 



WHY THE NORTH WON 323 

South, were simply so many roads to the interior which 
Federal gunboats and transports were speedily utilizing to 
land troops in the very heart of the ]\Iississippi Valley and 
to take possession of the seacoast and the river-bottoms 
for many miles inland. In fact, the only system of trans- 
portation, which the South had consistently used between 
plantations or with the outside world, fell into the hands 
of her enemies. The normal intercourse with Europe ceased 
even before hostilities were begun in earnest; by the summer 
of 1861 the South was already finding it difficult to procure 
lead, medicines, salt, and other necessities.** 

Nor did the cotton famine attain anything like the pro- 
portions or have anything like the effect expected. The high 
price and ready market encouraged exports of Egyptian cot- 
ton; the progress of the Northern armies in Tennessee and 
IMississippi, the success of the navy along the Gulf coast, 
enabled the Federal government to seize and confiscate con- 
siderable amounts of cotton, all of which was, of course, 
instantly distributed to the hungry looms in New England 
and Lancashire.^*' Both governments also connived at the 
smuggling of cotton through the lines,^^ and Davis and some 
of his cabinet were supposed to have agreed upon a scheme 
for exchanging the idle cotton bales with the Northerners 
for necessities.^- This expedient was viewed with little favor : 

9 Rebellion Records, Series IV, Vol. I, 276. 

10 "It has been estimated that after Sept. 1S63, England received 
indirectly from the Confederacy an average of 4000 bales a week." 
"Tlie 'leak' was not a trickling stream, but a river, and the 'famine' 
policy was a dream." Pendleton's Stephens, 305. 

11 C. A. Dana's Recollections are full of details about the system of 
licensing trade through the lines. He was a government spy in the 
western armies to investigate conditions and watch the generals. Hia 
confidential letters to Stanton are full of t]ie most valuable information. 

• 12 Jones, a confidential war clerk in the War Department at Rich- 
mond, handled the Secretarj^'s private correspondence, including letters 
from the Secretary and even from the President. With the consent of 
the authorities, he kept a diary in which he recorded his impressions 
of men and measures. A Rebel War Clerk's Diary, I, 180 (Phila., 
1866), and following, contains a good deal of information and con- 
jecture about cotton speculation. 



324 THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 

the North desired to exhaust the Southern supplies as soon 
as possible ; the South still believed that a real cotton famine 
would be a great weapon in its favor and that the expected 
results had not been obtained because there was really no 
famine. Blockade-runners plied a brisk trade and brought 
invaluable cargoes of salt, medicine, cartridges, and the like; 
but the vigilance of the Federal navy prevented any depend- 
ence on them as a regular source of supply. On the whole, it 
is no exaggeration to say that the blockade was so soon 
effective that the South was compelled to fight the War from 
her own resources, plus the very considerable supplies of 
all kinds on hand in May 1861. 

Her inability to utilize these resources was another cause of 
the Northern victory. When, in the first bitterness of de- 
feat, the Southerners sought some explanation of it, many 
concluded that Davis, his personality, his incapacity, the 
inefficiency of his appointees, his stubborn refusal to remove 
them were among the leading causes of disaster.^^ Men 
like Pollard fiercely denied that the South was exhausted in 
men or means ; ^* the administration had simply proved itself 
utterly incapable of utilizing and developing such resources 
as it pos-sessed. Few will now deny that the difficulties were 
too fundamental to have been overcome by human ability, 
yet had Davis and his administration shown anything like 
the consummate skill with which Lee utilized the meager re- 
sources at his disposal, the War might have been prolonged. 
But the result could hardly have been changed. Neither 

13 On Oct. 31, 1862, when he had had considerable time for observa- 
tion, Jones asked himself whether Davis could ever become a second 
Washington. "I know not, of course; but I know what quite a number 
here say of him now. They say he is a small specimen of a statesman 
and no military chieftain at all. And worse still that he is a capricious 
tyrant." Diary I, 178. Stephens declared in January 1864, after hi^ 
bitter quarrel with Davis had had time to cool. "Tliose at the head of 
our affairs" seem to have had no policy, but to have trusted "to the 
sublimity of luck and floating upon the surface of the occasion." Pen- 
dleton, Stephens, 311. 

1* Pollard, Life of Davis, 445-447. The whole volume is merely a 
detailed elaboration of this charge. 



WHY THE NORTH WON 325 

logic nor skill could create something out of nothing, and the 
moment the gates to Europe were shut, it was clear that the 
resources of the South were hopelessly inadequate and that 
during a conflict of such magnitude with a foe so abundantly 
provided with every necessity, no foresight could develop in 
time a sufficiently diversified industry to produce what was 
needed.^'' Great efforts were made ; more was accomplished 
than seemed in any way possible to the discouraged men 
when they first learned that the blockade would soon be 
effective; the straw was lacking and the bricks could not be 
made. 

By the summer of 1861, the supply of volunteers in the 
South was exliausted. Conscription was begun and was per- 
force continued throughout the war in the face of a con- 
stantly increasing opposition. Careful search failed to un- 
cover more than scanty supplies of nitre, salt, and saltpetre. 
There was not enough crude iron to keep at work the few 
foundries which the government did create, and very soon 
rails and old iron of all varieties had to be utilized. Cloth 
became scarce. All material for buttons gave out, and one 
prominent lady appeared at a Richmond ball in 1864 in a 
coarse homespun dress with buttons of gourd seeds. Paper 
and ink became particularly difficult to obtain, and the execu- 
tive correspondence was in the later years written on old 
envelopes split open. Wood grew so scarce in Richmond 
that it was treasured and hoarded like gold. 

Nothing was more serious than the effect upon transpor- 
tation of the lack of iron, of machinery, and of skilled 
mechanics. The few trunk lines of the South had not been 
equipped to carry the commerce of the country: cotton had 
been shipped by water or by short spur-lines of narrow- 
gauge, single-track railroads to the nearest port. The rolling 
stock of the trunk lines was therefore too small and the rails 
were too light to bear the severe strain at once imposed upon 

16 The story of this struggle with economic diflSculties is conveniently 
summarized with adequate citatioiis in Schwab's The Confederate States 
of America. 



326 THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 

them by the War Department. Locomotives broke down ; parts 
of the equipment wore out and could not be replaced because 
either the material for duplicating the damaged parts was 
lacking or no man understood how to turn them out. Hence 
such supplies as there were could not be promptly and 
efficiently distributed. Often the food collected by govern- 
ment agents spoiled before it could be moved ; leather, desper- 
ately needed in Virginia, had been collected in North Caro- 
lina but could not be shipped.^*' This deficiency of transpor- 
tation facilities was one of the greatest difficulties with which 
the Confederate government had to cope. It was due in the 
last analysis to cotton and to slavery, to the policy which 
had kept the South purely an agricultural country and which 
had regarded the development of diversified industry as need- 
less. This was not the fault of any individual, but of the 
very system which the Confederacy was created to defend, 
and which thus, by a curious poetic justice, demonstrated its 
unfitness to survive. 

There was, however, at many periods during the war, strong 
feeling among Southerners, which later research has on the 
whole justified, that the men in control did not make the 
most of the facilities and supplies at their disposal.^^ It is 
of course easy to criticize, and difficult to make sufficient al- 
lowance for the fact that the North enjoyed the use of the 
administrative machinery developed by the past seventy years 

16 Jones, Diary, I, 196. 

17 On such matters as this, Jones is an admirable witness, for he was 
purely an observer and had ample opportunities to learn the truth. 
The government has 50,000 pounds of leather in North Carolina, he 
writes. "This convinces me that there is abundance of leather in the 
South, if it were properly distributed. It is held, like everything else, 
by speculators, for extortioners' profits. The government might remedy 
the evils, and remove the distresses of the people; but instead of doing 
BO, the bureaus aggravate them by capricious seizures and tyrannical 
restrictions on transportation. Letters are coming in from every 
quarter complaining of the despotic acts of government agents." Diary, 
I, 196. "From all sections of the Confederacy, complaints are coming 
in that the military agents of the bureaus are oppressing the people 
and the belief is expressed by many that a sentiment is prevailing 
inimical to the government itself." Nov. 29, 1862. Ihid., p. 199. 



WHY THE XORTH WON 327 

and that the South was compelled to create a new adminis- 
tration and had perforce to fill many offices with men scarcely 
competent because no better were available. But this will 
not explain why Davis and his Cabinet so soon fell to log- 
gerheads; why Stephens and many other ante-bellum leaders 
went into implacable and at times violent opposition; and 
why the impression became general that Davis was appoint- 
ing favorites and not the best men available.^^ Jones, a 
highly confidential clerk in Richmond, who knew nearly all 
the secrets, wrote in his diarj!- of his surprise to find th* men 
who had done the most to create the War offered clerkships 
with hesitancy and relegated to "the lowest subordinate 
positions, while Tom, Dick, and Harry, never heard of before, 
young and capable of performing military service, rich and 
able to live without office, are heads of bureaus, chief clerks 
of departments, and staff officers flourishing their stars. ' ' ^^ 
Davis insisted upon retaining as generals Pemberton and 
Bragg, in whom many placed no confidence at all after their 
disasters of 1862 and 1863, and persistently refused to ad- 
vance to commands of importance Beauregard, in whom the 
people had implicit faith. 

The clearest case seems to be nearly if not quite the most 
important. It involves the Commissary General, Northrup. 

"How doea this speak for the government ; or rather the efficiency of 
the men who by 'many indirect ways' came into power? Alas! it is a 
sad commentary." Ibid., p. 204. "An expose of funds in the hands 
of disbursing agents shows that there are nearly 70 millions of dollars 
not accounted for." Ibid., 182. 

18" The Examiner to-day [July 1863] in praising him [Yancey] 
made a bitter assault on the President, saying he was unfortunately 
and hastily inflicted on the Confederacy at IMontgomery, and when fixed 
in position, banished from his presence the heart and brain of the 
South — denying all participation in the affairs of the government to 
the great men who were the authors of secession, etc." Ibid., I, 
391. 

^9 Diary, I, 205. 216. De Bow and Fitzhugh were offered clerkships 
with hesitation. Might not De Bow's intimate knowledge of Southern, 
conditions and familiarity with financial and commercial questions 
have been of value to the Treasury Department where the Secretary 
seems to have had few to advise him competently? 



328 THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 

Upon him fell the burden and responsibility of utilizing care- 
fully the scanty supplies, and it is hardly too much to say 
that by 1863 he retained the confidence only of Davis him- 
self, and was cordially hated by the people at large.-** At 
a time when shirts were selling for $12, Northrup issued an 
order offering to buy shirts for the army at $1, an offer 
widely commented upon as displaying something less than 
average perception, to say nothing of common sense. He 
offered to carry clothing from the families and friends of 
the soldiers to the men in the trenches, when, as Jones re- 
marked, "tlie people will not trust him to convey the cloth- 
ing to their sons and brothers, and so the army must suffer 
on. ' ' ^^ This was in 1862. Lee repeatedly complained of 
the inefficiency of Northrup 's work and more than once 
categorically requested his dismissal; but Davis declined to 
remove him. It seems scarcely possible to justify the orders 
forbidding the feeding of regiments on the produce of the 
district in which they were located and compelling them to 
depend upon irregular shipments of the regulation bacon and 
corn. Ugly charges, which received wide credit, were made 
of speculations in food and cotton by individuals and even 
by the commissary department,^^ of the use of the railroads 
for transportation of private shipments of grain for specu- 

20 Elaborate discussions of Northrup's case will be found in all tlie 
lives of Davis, in such books as Pollard's Lost Cause, and in the corre- 
spondence of the chief military men, especially cogent material being 
found in the letters of Lee. 

21 Jones, Diary, 1, 198, Nov. 29, 1862. "The Commissary General 
to-day says there is not wheat enough in Virginia (when a good crop 
was raised) for Gen. Lee's army, and, unless he has millions in money 
and cotton, the army must disband for want of food. I don't believe 
it." Ihid., p. 183. 

22 "God speed the day of peace," wrote Jones in 1862. "Our patriot- 
ism is mainly in the army and among the ladies of the South. The 
avarice and cupidity of the men at home could only be excelled by 
ravenous wolves; and most of our sufferings are fully deserved." 
Diary, I, 200. "We are already meager and emaciated. Yet I believe 
there is abundance of clothing and food, held by the extortioners. The 
government should wage war upon the speculators — enemies as mis- 
chievous as the Yankees." Ihid., II, 280. Sept., 1864. For cotton 
epeculations see Ihid., I, 180-2; 187 et seq. 



WHY THE NORTH WON 329 

lative ends,^^ of the "loan" of army mules and horses for 
months to wealthy gentlemen at a time when the army was 
in desperate need and Northrup was complaining of a scar- 
city of transport animals ; -* of illegal exemptions from taxes 
and food levies of the friends and relatives of Northrup. 
After all allowances have been made, there seems to have 
been in the commissary department much coriiiption and 
inefficiency, whose immediate effect on the result of the War 
was only too apparent and for which Davis in person must 
largely be held responsible. 

The finances of the Confederacy seem also to have been 
mismanaged. The Secretary of the Treasury, Meminger, was 
honest and well-intentioned, but totally unacquainted with 
finance. He had, indeed, a fundamental difficulty to struggle 
with which no skill could have surmounted — the lack of suf- 
ficient specie in the country to serve as an adequate medium 
of exchange for domestic and foreign business. There seem 
to have been about fifteen millions in specie in the South 

23 Jones, Diary, I, 182 et seq. "I believe the commissaries and quar- 
termasters are cheating the government." "A gentleman in Alabama 
writes that his [Northrup's] agents are speculating in food." Ibid., 198. 

2* "Our cause is in danger of being lost for want of horses and mules, 
and yet I discovered to-day that the government [i. e., Northrup] has 
been lending horses to men who have but recently suffered some of the 
calamities of war. I discovered it in a letter from Hon. R. M. T. 
Hunter of Essex County, asking in behalf of himself and neighbors to 
be permitted to retain the borrowed horses beyond the time specified, 
October 1. Mr. Hunter borrowed two horses and four mules. He is 
worth millions and only suffered his first loss by the enemy a few 
weeks ago!" Sept., 1864. Ibid., II, 279. A few days later he wrote: 
"Over 100,000 landed proprietors and most of the slave-owners are 
now out of the ranks, and soon, I fear, we shall have an army that will 
not fight, having nothing to fight for. And this is the result of the 
pernicious policy of partiality and exclusiveness, disintegrating society 
in such a crisis, and recognizing distinction of ranks, the higher class 
staying home and making money, the lower class thrust into the 
trenches." Of course, the opinion of one man, however well informed, 
is hardly conclusive evidence in so important a matter as this, but a 
man in Jones's position of trust would scarcely believe such things 
about his immediate superiors unless something was wrong. If his 
testimony is worth anything on any subject, it certainly should be im- 
portant on this. 



330 THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 

at the outbreak of the War, which, carefully husbanded, 
would have served as the stable basis of issues of treasury 
notes or national bank notes, large enough for the needs of 
ordinary business. That the specie could not be replaced if 
exported ; that the country would have no basis for a medium 
of exchange if it disappeared ; that it was enough to support 
business at home but utterly inadequate to meet any of the 
needs of the War at home or abroad, seems never to have 
dawned on any one at Richmond, Hamilton had financed 
the United States with only two millions in specie, but this 
they either never knew or had totally forgotten. However 
that may have been, the specie in the South was with in- 
credible difficulty collected by the government in the form 
of a loan, and with still more unbelievable stupidity was 
shipped to Europe to pay for supplies.^^ Then, notwith- 
standing the numerous examples offered by history of the 
futility of using unlimited paper money as a medium of 
exchange, the government began in 1861 a series of treasury 
note issues, and, whenever one issue was exhausted, printed 
more. The inefficiency of the administration is clear from 
the fact that within a couple of years the Secretary himself 
is believed not to have known how many notes had been issued 
or what the actual indebtedness of the government was.^" 

Taxes paid in money speedily became a farce; the people 
paid back to the government its own worthless paper. There 
was at the South no commercial fabric, no credit structure on 
which the government and the community might rely in the 
crisis. The government was promptly reduced to taxes in 
kind, the collection of grain, leather, and the like from the 
producer, and upon it was instantly forced the thousand 
and one burdens of transportation and manufacture which 
the Northern Government was able to turn over to private 
enterprise with admirable results. The Confederate ad- 

25 The financial history of the Confederacy, bonds, notes, and taxa- 
tion, has been treated in detail by Schwab, in his Confederate States 
of America. 

26 Eggleston, Rebel Recollections, 79. 



WHY THE NORTH WON 331 

minstration, "weak at best, compelled for the most part to 
work through inexperienced hands, had thrust upon it the 
almost insuperable task of utilizing the crude products of 
an agricultural communitj^ and of making them somehow or 
other meet the complex necessities of a civilized State at war. 
The failure of such an administration adequately to solve 
such a problem could be at best scarcely more than a ques- 
tion of time. 

Out of such a situation grew inevitably centralized govern- 
ment, acts which seemed arbitrary to the people, infringe- 
ments upon the liberty of States and of individuals. As at 
the North, the exigencies of the case forced the government 
to act and not pause very long over constitutional subtleties. 
Strangely enough, this very sort of centralized administra- 
tion, this veiy readiness to override individual and State 
opinion in the name of expediency and of the general wel- 
fare, had been one of the causes alleged by the South for 
secession, and these very things the new constitution had 
been framed to prevent. South Carolina had inveighed 
against the tariff,-" and the new Constitution had forbidden 
customs duties and declared for free trade; yet the Con- 
federacy almost at once instituted a tariff of the most onerous 
and harassing type, a duty on exports which would have 
been extremely burdensome had there been any opportunity 
to collect it.^* Worse than all others were the constant and 
obvious violations of State sovereignty and of individual 
liberty. In the fall of 1862, when only Virginia, the Caro- 
linas, Georgia, and Alabama remained entire in the hands of 
the Confederates, Georgia and North Carolina were roused 
almost to the point of rebellion by their anger at what they 
deemed the disregard of the doctrine of States' sovereignty, ^^ 

27 Her Ordinance of Secession declared the tariff one of her chief 
grievances. 

-8 To ensure the payment of interest and principal on the $15,000,000 
bond issiie authorized Feb. 28, 1861, an export duty of one-eighth of a 
cent a pound Avas levied on all cotton exported, and was to be paid in 
specie or in the coupons of the bonds. 

29 Governor Brown of Georgia wrote to Davis that "no act of the 



332 THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 

and the Charleston Courier called loudly for a convention 
to depose or impeach the President.^" Many prominent men 
considered it better to yield to the North and restore the 
Union than to live under such a Confederacy.^^ After An- 
tietam, when Lee 's regiments were melting away by desertion, 
Governor Brown of Georgia put every possible obstacle in 
the way of conscription in that State, and at the fall elec- 
tion, Vance, an open and avowed opponent of Davis's, was 
elected Governor in North Carolina by a majority of forty 
thousand.^- To connect Richmond and the field of war with 
Charleston and Atlanta after the investiture of Chattanooga 
had closed the only trunk line, it became necessary to join 
together various short lines and build about forty miles of 
road from Danville, Va., to Greensboro, N. C. The latter 
State declined to permit the Confederate government to build 
it, and the road, a military necessity of the very first eon- 
sequence, was built only when the war power was exercised 
to override the prohibition of the State.^^ In 1864, Gov- 
ernor Brown of Georgia flatly refused in an abusive and of- 
fensive letter, written at a crucial moment, to send the 
militia of the State into the ranks in Virginia.^* "Gloom 

government of the United States prior to the secession of Georgia had 
struck a blow at constitutional liberty so fell as has been stricken [sic] 
by the conscript acts. . . . Tlie people of Georgia will refuse to yield 
their sovereignty to usurpation." Dodd's Davis, 300. 

30 Issue of May 22, 1862. 

31 Stephens, the Vice-President, wrote in August 1862, "Better in 
my judgment that Richmond should fall and that the enemy's armies 
should sweep our whole country from the Potomac to the Gulf than 
that our people should submissively yield obedience to one of these 
edicts of our own generals." Pendleton's Stephens, 292. 

32 Dodd's Davis, 283. Mr. Dodd, a Southern man, has temperately 
dealt with the very large amount of material on the infringements of 
States' sovereignty without denying their existence or importance and 
yet without drawing conclusions of too sweeping a character. 

33 Dodd's Davis, 259-60. 

34 "A long letter was received at the [war] department to-day from 
Governor Brown absolutely refusing to respond to the President's call 
for the militia of that State. He says he will not encourage the Presi- 
dent's ambitious projects by placing in his hands, and under his un- 
conditional control all that remains to pi'eserve the reserved rights 



WHY THE NORTH WON 333 

and despondency rule the hour," wrote Cobb from Georgia, 
"and bitter opposition to the administration mingled with 
disaffection and disloyalty is manifesting itself. " ^^ In fact, 
the Confederate government, like the Northern, found itself 
hampered continually by a bitter and active opposition among 
its own citizens, which not infrequently was carried to the 
point of flat refusal to act at critical moments although the 
prompt cooperation of all was needed to render the contest 
effectual. ' ' The cause was lost by our own dissensions, ' ' wrote 
a member of the Cabinet in later years. 

The length of the War was due to a variety of reasons, but 
first and foremost to the military skill and personal mag- 
netism of General Robert E, Lee and the able assistance he 
received from such men as Jackson and Johnston. Indeed, 
the consummate skill with which Lee fought a losing contest 
for years has scarcely if ever been surpassed. Certainly no 
general of equal skill was enrolled in the Northern armies; 
Grant's reputation was due to his success, which in its turn 
was the result of a combination of many factors, among which 
the superior resources of the North and other influences just 
enumerated ought to have prominence. Much allowance must 
also be made for the fact that the South stood on the defensive 
and that to conquer her required the subjugation of an enor- 

of his State. He bitterly and offensively criticizes the President's 
management of military affairs." Jones, Diary, II, 292-3. Sept. 26, 
1864. 

^a Rebellion Reeords, Series IV, Vol. Ill, 1010. On Feb. 3, 18G4, 
Davis sent the following message to the Confederate Congress: "Dis- 
content, disaffection, and disloyalty are manifested among those who 
through the sacrifices of others, have enjoyed quiet and safety at home. 
Public meetings have been held in some of which a treasonable design 
is masked by a pretence of devotion to State sovereignty, and in others 
is openly avowed. ... In certain localities men of no mean position 
do not hesitate to avow their disloyalty and hostility to our cause, and 
tlieir advocacy of peace on the terms of submission and the abolition 
of slavery. . . , [Soldiers are taken from the ranks on the eve of battle 
by means of WTits of habeas corpus. If this continues] Desertion, 
already a frightful evil, will become the order of the day. And who 
will arrest the deserter, when most of those at home are engaged with 
him in the common cause of setting the government at defiance?" 
Richardson, Messages and Papers of the Confederacy, I, 396, 398. 



334 THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 

mous theater of war, which, even had the resistance been less 
able and desperate, would have required time for adequate oc- 
cupation of the numerous strategic points. Furthermore, it 
must always be remembered that the South had very much 
the advantage in equipment in 1861, that the North required 
time to adjust itself to the situation, and was, moreover, 
hampered by the commercial crisis of 1861-2. Time was neces- 
sary to make the greater resources of the North in men and 
munitions of war tell decisively upon the outcome. Indeed, 
the very abundance of the Northern provision for the army 
was for a while an administrative problem of the first magni- 
tude. There was too much food and clothing to be promptly 
and accurately distributed by the old machinery, and the 
creation of a new administration, undertaken by Stanton with 
admirable determination and energy and executed with con- 
summate skill, required time to become effective. 

Besides, politics at the North was constantly tying the hands 
of the generals and robbing them of discretion, and the ac- 
tivity of the opposition during the year 1862 made it long 
doubtful whether the conflict would not come to an end be- 
cause of the refusal of the Northern people to countenance it 
longer. Lincoln found it difficult during the first two years to 
leave the conduct of the campaign in the hands of the men at 
the front. His idea that Washington needed fifty thousand 
men either within it or close at hand to insure its safety often 
prevented the undertaking or completion of any plan which 
depended for success upon the concentration of the Union 
forces, and the Confederates soon discovered that a feint at 
Washington invariably paralyzed the Union armies, because 
of the dispatch of so large a detachment to protect the city. 
Lincoln saw more clearly than the men in the field that the 
real object of the War was not so much to win battles as to 
crush the Confederacy, and that there were enemies at home 
almost as difficult to meet and whose defeat was even more 
imperative than that of Lee. From the first, there was a 
strong minority at the North opposed to the War, some be- 
cause of a belief in the illegality of coercion or in the right to 



WHY THE NORTH WON 335 

secede, the vast majority because they believed the conduct of 
the war reprehensible. The administrative corruption and 
confusion of the first year, the defeat at Bull Run, the long 
inactivity of the huge force of men at the front while Mc- 
Clellan was turning that "armed mob" into an army was 
interpreted at the North very much to the detriment of the 
government. It had been doubtful in 1861 whether the North 
would support a war at all ; it continued to be doubtful as in- 
activity and bungling were succeeded by the reverses of 1862 
whether the North would not make imperative the conclusion 
of an ignoble peace by the withdrawal of troops and supplies. 
Denunciations of Lincoln and of his generals were delivered 
by notable men in Washington and even in the anterooms 
of the Executive Mansion.^" In September 1862, men said 
openly in Pennsjdvania that they would be glad to hang Lin- 
coln to the nearest lamp-post.^^ Men, waiting to see the Presi- 
dent, maligned and abused him openly and went to lengths 
which were amazing.^^ A Democratic paper, the Neiv York 
World, declared on June 9, 1864, after Lincoln had been re- 
nominated: "The age of statesmen is gone: the age of rail- 
splitters and tailors, of buffoons, boors, and fanatics, has suc- 
ceeded. ... In a crisis of the most appalling magnitude, re- 
quiring statesmanship of the highest order, the country is 
asked to consider the claims of two ignorant, boorish, third- 
rate backwoods lawyers for the highest stations in the govem- 

36 Nearly all the books dealing with life in Washington during the 
War or with Lincoln aa President will furnish numerous examples. 
Oberholtzer in his Life of Lincoln cites several characteristic cases. 

37 Oberholtzer, Lincoln, 237. 

38 So Riddle tells in his Recollections, 267. "The one most loud and 
bitter was Henry Wilson of Massachusetts. His open assaults were 
amazing." Lincoln would be renominated, said Wilson, and "bad as 
tTiat would be, the best must be made of it." Chase, Secretary of the 
Treasury and later Chief Justice, wrote in 1864: "Nothing except the 
waste of life is more painful in this war than the absolutely reckless 
waste of means. . . . Contrary to all rules, the spigot in Uncle Abe's 
barrel is made twice as big as the bung-hole. He may have been a 
good flat-boat man and rail-splitter, but he certainly never learned the 
true science of coopering." Quoted by Rhodes, History of the United 
States, IV, 477-8, 



336 THE RISE OF THE AJVIERICAN PEOPLE 

ment." The Democratic party campaigned the North in 
1862 and 1864 on the platform that the conduct of the War 
was a disgrace and demanded its prompt conclusion by a treaty 
with the South upon the best terms obtainable. 

As Lincoln perceived, the defeat of the administration at 
the polls in the North would be even more disastrous than 
reverses in the field; and reverses in the field were the 
most powerful weapon in the hands of his political adversaries 
at home. Despatches poured into Washington from Northern 
governors and politicians: "Nothing but success, speedy and 
decided, will save our cause from destruction. In the North- 
west, distrust and despair are seizing upon the hearts of the 
people." ^^ Such was the refrain. The difficulties of the situ- 
ation were nothing to Halleck and Lincoln ; the armies must 
move forward at all costs, for inaction produced almost as 
unfavorable an effect on Northern opinion as did defeat. The 
generals must act so as to retain the confidence of the people 
at home ; the war was no mere military event ; it was a political 
and economic cataclysm of the utmost complexity. Its ob- 
ject was not to win victories but to destroy the Confederacy 
and military operations must be sacrificed to the exigencies 
of political campaigns, even if it became necessary to re- 
nounce the plans which seemed from a military point of view 
conclusive. Food, clotMng, transportation, the need of elabo- 
rate preparations before opening the campaign, so invariably 
insisted upon by MeClellan and other generals, made Lincoln 
impatient in the face of the feats accomplished by Lee with- 
out such resources or preparations. The President, wrote 

39 These sentences are from a despatch from Governor Morton of 
Indiana to Lincoln, dated Oct. 21, 1862. The Governors of Ohio and 
Illinois telegraphed at the same time in similar strain. The most in- 
structive incident from this point of view was the removal of Buell 
and the appointment of Rosecrans, solely with a view to securing an 
immediate and successful advance. Rosecrans then declined to advance 
until his preparations were complete and for nearly a month remained 
at Nashville, furiously busy but apparently inactive, while President, 
Congress, and the Northern press raged and stormed. To all orders 
and demands he gave but one answer, his resignation. Rhodes has par- 
ticularly well emphasized such issues as these in his account of the War. 



WHY THE NORTH WON 337 

Halleck, the General-in-Chief, to Buell, ' ' does not understand 
why we cannot march as the enemy marches, live as he lives, 
and fight as he fights, unless we admit the inferiority of our 
troops and generals." *** But the generals, campaigning in the 
Alleghanies, knew that the mountain districts were at heart 
Unionist and that the surest way to throw them into the ranks 
of the enemy would be to forage there for the support of the 
Federal armies.'*^ The strength of the Unionist party at the 
South had been counted upon by many to aid as powerfully 
in the eventual reduction of the Confederacy as campaigns 
and armies. Besides, the desperate expedients to which 
necessity drove Lee were scarcely measures to adopt from 
choice with a restless and suspicious public watching for mis- 
takes. The news that the troops were ragged, barefoot, and 
hungry because of an impetuous advance into a district where 
there was insufficient forage and to which supplies had not 
been brouglit, would have been a worse blow to the administra- 
tion than inaction could possibly be. In December 1862, the 
situation was darkest. "Everything goes wrong," said Lin- 
coln to Seward and "Weed. "The rebel armies hold their own ; 
Grant is wandering around in Mississippi ; Burnside manages 
to keep ahead of Lee ; Seymour has carried New York and if his 
[the Democratic] party carries and holds many of the North- 
em States, we shall have to give up the fight, for we can never 
conquer three-fourths of our countrymen, scattered in front, 
flank, and rear. ' ' *- 

4« Rebellion Records, XVI, Part II, G27. Lincoln wrote to McClellan, 
Oct. 13, 1862: "Are you not over-cautious when you assume that you 
cannot do what the enemy is constantly doing? . . . Change positions 
with the enemy, and think you not he would break your communication 
with Richmond within the next twenty-four hours? . . . W^e should not 
so operate as merely to drive him away. As we must beat him some- 
where or fail finallv. we can do it, if at all, easier near to us than far 
away." Ibid.. XIX, Part I, 13. 

41 Hallock telegraphed to Grant after the battle of Corinth : "\^Tiy 
not pursue the enemy into Mississippi, supporting your army on the 
country?" Grant replied, laconically, "An army cannot subsist itself 
on the country except in forage." Rhodes, History of the United States, 
IV. 181. 

42 Oberholtzer, Liyicohi, 242. His authority is not cited. 



338 THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 

Grant was more successful than other generals not so much 
because of superior military ability as because he alone fully 
grasped the relation of the military to the political situation. 
To retire along the railroad from Corinth and luka upon 
Memphis, there to pause to recuperate his army, to prepare a 
base of operations from which the following spring to ad- 
vance down the river upon Vicksburg, would have been from 
a military point of view much better than an immediate ad- 
vance overland on Vicksburg through Mississippi bayous and 
swamps, constantly exposed to the danger of losing touch with 
his base of supplies. But headlines in the Northern papers, 
' ' Grant Retreats on Memphis, ' ' would have been at that junc- 
ture fatal to the campaign and to his career as a general, and 
he knew it. An advance, which did not expose him to actual 
defeat, which would hearten the sinking and discouraged and 
give the administration papers a chance to print the scare- 
heads, "Grant Advancing," would be potent material with 
which to conjure at home. Eventually, the victories at Gettys- 
burg and Vicksburg "knocked the planks out of the Chicago 
platform" which declared the conduct of the War a failure. 
Not till then was it clear that the North would support the 
War to the end. 

These difficulties were intensified by the wide disapproval 
of the interference with the right of free speech and of the 
press and of the arbitrary arrests made by virtue of the * ' war 
powers" assumed by Lincoln. It was thought at Washington 
inexpedient to allow speeches at public meetings which openly 
expressed sympathy for the South or declared the Federal 
government a despotism. Several men arrested for such ut- 
terances without the usual legal formalities were promptly 
elected by the people of their States to the legislatures, and in 
one case even to the United States Senate, at the very moment 
when they were in custody charged with treason. The large 
bounties offered by State and nation to volunteers failed to 
maintain the strength of the Union forces and the North was 
compelled to follow the expedients adopted months before at 
the South and have recourse to a draft to recruit the armies. 



WRY THE NORTH WON 339 

It aroused immediate and widespread opposition and in July 
1863, caused in New York City a riot which assumed the pro- 
portions of a revolt against the government, held control of 
the city for three days, and was finally only reduced by troops 
hastily sent back from the front to cooperate with the navy. 
The amazing commercial prosperity at the North, which be- 
came evident in 1863, and was due to fundamental causes 
over which no one had control, greatly affected the attitude 
of the majority in favor of the administration and prevented 
anything more than sporadic and temporary opposition. The 
number of exemptions, the permission to pay substitutes, and 
the comparative ease of desertion also helped.^^ With this 
political opposition, Lincoln dealt with conspicuous success. 
The support of the government by a majority at the North 
was due more considerably than most men have realized to 
the personal character, influence, and tact of Abraham Lin- 
coln, who in this sense was one of the important factors in the 
winning of the War by the North. 

« The Draft of July 18, 1864, for 500,000 men resulted in the draw- 
ing of 231,918 names, of whom 138,536 reported; 82,531 were ex- 
empted outright; and the total draft amounted to 56,005, of whom 
more than half provided substitutes. In New York the accumulated 
county, state, and national bounties amounted to $677 for a new recruit 
and an additional $100 for a man who had seen service. Enlisting in 
one State, securing the bounty, deserting on the way to the front, 
enlisting again in order to receive a second bounty, became all too 
common a practice. Of a detachment of 625 recruits from New Hamp- 
shire for the Army of the Potomac in 1864, 137 deserted on passage to 
the front, 82 to the enemy's picket lines, and 36 to the rear, lea-vnng 
a total of 370 men. Over 41 per cent deserted. Rhodes, Eistory of the 
I'nitcd States, IV, 429 et seq. The Southern armies experienced simi- 
lar difficulties. 



xxy 

THE RESULTS OF THE CIVIL WAR 

The Northern men who fought and won the War invariably 
declared that its purpose was the ' ' preservation of the Union, ' ' 
the "maintenance of the Constitution," the defeat of those 
who were seeking to ''destroy" both the Constitution and the 
Union. Yet, it is incontestable that the result of the War — 
the one permanent result of significance due directly to the 
War — was the alteration bej^ond recognition of both ''Consti- 
tution" and "Union," as those words had been popularly 
and commonly understood in 1860. And every element in 
both was as unmistakably and unalterably changed — the peo- 
ple collectively, the individual, the idea of citizenship, the 
notion of a State and of its relation to its own citizens as 
well as to the Federal government, the idea of what was 
meant by the North, the South, the West. 

The difficulty in comprehending this apparent paradox lies 
in the very general failure to remember what Lincoln meant 
by the words "Union" and "Constitution." The strong 
sentiment in the North in 1860 against the right of the Fed- 
eral government to coerce a State will convince the student 
that the word ' ' Constitution ' ' connoted to most people North 
and South before the War a compact made by sovereign 
States, and that the ' ' Union ' ' denoted a league of units bound 
together by some tie not very exactly defined in any one 's 
mind. Men had not yet rid themselves of the precedents and 
traditions of the anti-national movement which had received 
in Colonial and Revolutionary times the almost universal ad- 
herence of the people. To Lincoln, on the other hand, the 
word "Union" meant oneness, nationality; the Constitution 
had "created" a government of individuals and not of States. 

340 



THE RESULTS OF THE CIVIL WAR 341 

He saw the issue of nationality as the vital concept behind the 
Revolution, and indeed credited the makers of the Declara- 
tion of Independence with national ideas which they would 
have denied with some vehemence.'^ But he correctly ap- 
preciated the fact that the Constitution had signified to its 
makers the conscious adoption of nationalism and in the de- 
bates of the Convention he found ample confirmation of his 
own beliefs and ideals.- States' rights and secession he saw 

1 On his way to Washington in 1861, Lincoln made many speeches 
whose tenor was substantially the same. "When the time does come 
[for action], I shall take the ground that I think is right — right for 
the North, for the South, for the East, for the West, for the whole 
country." Temporarily, he represented "the majesty of the nation"; 
so he told audience after audience. That phrase was new and pregnant 
with meaning. To the New Jersey Senate he said: "I am exceedingly 
anxious that that thing [struggled for in the Revolution] — that some- 
thing even more than national independence; that something that held 
out a great promise to all the people of the world to all time to come — 
I am exceedingly anxious that this Union, the Constitution, and the 
liberties of the people shall be perpetuated in accordance with the 
original idea for which the struggle was made." His course would 
"tend to the perpetuity of the nation, and the liberty of these States 
and these people." Nicolay and Hay, Complete Works, VI, 147, 152, 
154, 151, 155, respectively. What he found in the writings of Wash- 
ington were probably such phrases as these. "Let us look to our na- 
tional character and to things beyond the present moment." Writings 
of Washington, Ford's ed., XI, 81. "I have labored, ever since I have 
been in the service, to discourage all kinds of local attachments and 
distinctions of country, denominating the whole by the greater name 
of American, but I have found it impossible to overcome prejudices." 
Ibid.. V, 117. The wish and the impossibility of its realization are both 
significant for us. 

2 "A Union of the States is a Union of the men composing them, 
from whence a national character results to the whole. ... If they 
formed a confederacy in some respects — they formed a Nation in others." 
Hunt's Madison's Notes, I, 186. See also I, 233, 248-50. 259, 263, 268, 
274, 285, etc., etc., for clear evidence that both parties in the Convention 
were agreed as to what the document they were making meant. The 
Federalist and the debates in the various States over the adoption of 
the Constitution show that the leaders all understood that a conscious 
choice in favor of nationalism was being registered. Lincoln's doctrine 
of the Union as older than the States, as found in the First Inaugural 
and other state papers, will be found in this statement of Wilson's: 
"Mr. Wilson could not admit the doctrine that when the Colonies be- 
came independent of G. Britain, they became independent also of 
each other. He read the declaration of Independence, observing thereon 



342 THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 

were, like Anti-Federalism, anti-national, striving openly for 
a confederation of sovereigns and denying the existence of a 
nation in the true sense of the word ^* or the possibility or de- 
sirability of attempting to create one.^ 

We must not to-day, however, mistake the Declaration of 
Independence for a proclamation of nationality made by the 
people as individuals, nor confuse the affirmation of nationality 
as the ultimate basis for permanent central government, made 
in the preamble to the Constitution, with the existence of na- 
tional sentiment among the people as a whole, and, least of 
all, with the flowering of national consciousness or with its 
realization of its own existence. The Constitution was a 
prophecy, a forecast of what would become true, and was 
startlingly accurate, for the framers saw that the social, eco- 
nomic, and geographical conditions in the country made 
eventual union inevitable.* Webster saw what the Constitu- 

that the United Colonies were declared to be free and independent 
States; and inferring that they were independent not individually, but 
Unitedly and that they were confederated as they were independent 
States." Ihid., I, 188. 

2a The Salem Gazette for October 18 and 21, 1814, contained long ar- 
ticles on States' sovereignty and denounced nationalism. "The truth is 
that the federal constitution is nothing more than a treaty between 
independent sovereignties." A war between the States would be a "pub- 
lic war between sovereigns ... as much as in a war between Russia 
and France." The Boston Daily Advertiser in November, 1814, said: 
"We are too prone to think that there is a distinct sovereignty known 
by the name of the Government of the United States and that it exists 
independently of the several States. Whereas, in fact, the national 
compact is only an agreement entered into between the whole of the 
States and each individual State." The Columbian Centinel of Boston 
at this same time declared: "The individual States are 'free, sovereign 
and independent' nations . . . [To the Federal government] our al- 
legiance is secondary, qualified, and conditional ; to our State sovereign- 
ties it is primary, universal and absolute." See these and other ex- 
tracts to the same purpose in the Mississippi Valley Historical Associa- 
tion Proceedings, 1912-13, VI, 176-188. 

3 General Quitman of Alabama in a public letter written in 1852, 
said: "If reorganized Democracy admits the absolute doctrines of the 
existence and sovereignty of a supreme national government, possessing 
power to coerce the States, nothing will be lost by its defeat and de- 
struction." Hodgson, Cradle of the Confederacy, 335. 

*The great question debated in the Convention was really what were 



THE RESULTS OF THE CIVIL WAR 343 

tion meant and his splendid affirmation of nationality as the 
true ideal of a democratic people, his orations eulogizing the 
Colonists and the Men of 1776 as patriots, his proof that the 
Constitution vested the sovereignty in the people as individ- 
uals ^* are landmarks in the history of the achieving of Ameri- 
can nationality. That the nation was becoming sentient, was 
really beginning to signify its existence by unmistakable signs, 
Webster comprehended. The greatness of the vision en- 
thralled many of his listeners : * ' Three or four times I thought 
my temples would burst with the gush of blood," wrote Tick- 
nor.^ But to the majority, nationality had not yet become a 
reality.^ The logic of facts was too strong. Webster, how- 
ever, was followed by a long line of historians, poets, and es- 
sayists — Bancroft, Sparks, Longfellow, Lowell, Whittier, 
Emerson, Thoreau — who apostrophized Freedom and Liberty 
as magnificent qualities and wrote of a great nationality en- 
nobled by finding its expression through such concepts. Only 
by the fostering of such ideals in the popular consciousness 
could an aggi'egation of individuals become a people and 
attain nationality in the highest sense ; only thus could an en- 
tity evolve worthy of national consciousness, and possessed of 
those fundamental virtues on which it could alone be nourished 
or sustained. Potent as was the written word, the spoken 
word was mightier, and the message of Webster and of the 
leaders of the intellectual world really reached the Northern 
people through the pulpit, the lecture platform, and the school 

and what would be likely to be tlie social, economic, and geographical 
conditions in the country and was one national government or two or 
three confederacies tlie better solution. Again and again they reached 
the conclusion that union only would be feasibly Hunt's Madison's 
Notes, I, 255-7, 267, 269, 271 note, 274, 278-9, 288-91, 298-9, etc. 

4a "That imity of government which constitutes us one people." Web- 
ster, Eulogy on Washington, Works, 1, 230. Chancellor Kent, intro- 
ducing Webster at a public dinner in his honor to celebrate the 1830 
speech, said: "It turned the attention of the public to the great doc- 
trines of the national rights and national union." Webster, Works, I, 
194. 

B Life and Letters of George Ticknor, I, 330. 

« See the quotation from De Tocqueville, supra, p. 22G. 



344 THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 

room, where the sermons, addresses, and text-books all 
breathed patriotism and nationality. 

In the anti-slavery debates, in the searehings of conscience, 
North and South, over the issues that produced the War, we 
hear the first incoherent mutterings, the first attempts at con- 
nected thinking and at self-expression of the new giant, wak- 
ing to consciousness of his own existence. The nation was 
seeking in mental anguish national ideals, moral standards, 
ethical concepts, policies — broad in scope, lofty in purpose, uni- 
versal in application and meaning. From individuals here 
and there came something like utterance of the notions with 
whose mystic purport the national subconscious mind was full, 
the eager expression as conscious thought through a human 
and individualistic medium of the ethical and moral concepts 
of which the people as a whole were but dimly conscious. The 
greatness of such men lies not in themselves. They are vessels 
of the spirit, sensitive media for the apprehension and ex- 
pression of the seething content of human sentiment strug- 
gling round them for utterance. 

In Lincoln, the nation. North and South, grew to see it- 
self. He was in the highest possible sense a representative 
man, making the nation conscious of its oneness of purpose 
and idealism, of the glory and splendor of nationality, and of 
the wondrous possibilities open to a great people who should 
be filled with the ideals of unity, democracy, and liberty. In 
him and through him, both North and South awakened to a 
consciousness of the meaning of American development, and 
realized that the War had actually been an attempt, all un- 
witting, to destroy this collective personality before it had at- 
tained consciousness. And in the last year of the War, as the 
consciousness of that great vital fact became universal, in the 
moment when the glorious conception of what nationality 
meant flashed upon the vast majority of Americans, a new na- 
tion was born. For a nation is; it springs into life, full 
fledged, in the imagery of the old Greek description of the 
birth of Minerva, and at once is possessed of sentient life 
and vast powers. Washington had made us free and inde- 



THE RESULTS OF THE CIVIL WAR 345 

pendent; Lincoln became the father of American nationality. 
He was not the man who made it possible nor the man whose 
glowing words first carried the vision to men's minds, but the 
man in whom and through whom it became an actuality. 
Webster had made New England see the vision ; Lincoln made 
the South, which neither saw nor believed, which was in arms 
against the very concept, not only realize that the object of 
the War was not conquest, the abolition of slavery, nor the 
abrogation of constitutional rights, but the creation of a na- 
tion out of a divided people. It was a great achievement to 
have convinced those whose own interests urged them to ac- 
cept the idea of nationality ; it was a thousand-fold greater to 
have convinced those whose interests were to be vitally in- 
jured by the acceptance of the idea, of its greatness and 
worth. The most immediate and most important result of the 
War was the creation of the American nation and this result 
we owe chiefly to Abraham Lincoln. 

One is tempted almost to doubt the evidence of his own 
eyes and look upon this sudden "creation" of national con- 
sciousness as a miracle of that sort which cannot in its very 
nature be the work of one man. Plow could a nation, as it 
Mere, spring into existence ? Is it true, after all, that nations 
are created by fighting, that great issues can be actually de- 
cided by battles? The "creation" of the new nation, in this 
particular instance, consisted in the achieving by the majority 
of a consciousness of facts and tendencies which had always 
been true. As a child takes form in its mother's womb and 
exists before it makes its entry into the world, so a nation 
grows, all unconscious of its own existence ; and, as with the 
child, we date its life from its first moment of consciousness. 
The War made the people aware of what the Northern leaders 
had long seen ; it convinced the South that the position of the 
North was the true one. The War showed the people, North, 
South, and West, what the President of the United States had 
meant by the Union and the Constitution, and that what he 
said was true. 

In a sense, the War created the nation: it stimulated, as 



346 THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 

nothing else could have done, the growth of common sentiment. 
The armies brought together men from the most distant sec- 
tions and made them acquainted, showing them their common 
interests and beliefs, the essential identity of their democratic 
ideals, their common humanity and sympathy. The prisoners 
in both camps learned how superjficial were the differences 
which they in their ignorance had assumed to be so great; 
with the vastness of the country and of its natural resources, 
most men became acquainted for the first time. The War gave 
the country a common aim for which to work and welded the 
North and the West tightly together, and made the Southern 
men more conscious of their similarities than of their differ- 
ences. 

Again, the War was a great social leveler and brought to- 
gether in the trenches men hitherto sundered by wealth and 
social position. In the South especially, poor white and 
planter met on terms of equality and eagh learned to respect 
and admire the sterling traits of the other. Intercourse was 
stimulated and increased and the necessities of the struggle 
gave an immediacy to the attempt to agree upon the solution of 
common problems and difficulties which forced the process of 
the growth of a consensus of opinion. Gradually, the non- 
essentials became apparent and were discarded by both parties ; 
gradually the really vital issue of nationality was pushed to 
the fore, almost entirely obscuring slavery and States' sover- 
eignty.*'* The average man thought perforce much about the 
reason for the War, about its purpose, about differences and 
similarities; and, as the essential nobility of each be- 
came clearer to the other, both North and South began to ask 
themselves why they fought at all. The simple presence of 
so many men in the various armies, the necessity of travel, the 

«a "WTiat was at first a struggle to maintain the outward form of our 
government has become a,- contest to preserve the life and assert the 
supreme will of the nation. Even in April 18G1, . . . there was an 
instinctive feeling that the very germinating principle of our nation- 
ality was at stake and that unity of territory was but another name 
for unity of idea, nay, was impossible without it and undesirable if it 
were possible." Lowell in the Atlantic Monthly, October 1864, p. 566. 



THE RESULTS OP THE CIVIL WAR 347 

process of acquaintance was making the whole community 
aware that a nation existed, and this dawning of conscious- 
ness was in itself the process of birth. The War was the 
travail of the new nation. It proved all those things to the 
common man which he must otherwise have waited long to 
appreciate. It showed him what Lincoln meant and proved 
its truth. 

The War had been literally won by the forces of nationality 
over those of separateness ; by the geographical and com- 
mercial factors making the North comparatively stronger than 
the South. Here again the conflict merely made apparent 
the existing fact that the forces of union were and long had 
been predominant in the life of the people. They had pro- 
duced the Constitution and the numerous compromises and 
had postponed the War for seventy years. The accidents of 
geography and of settlement had produced communities which 
were and are singularly interdependent. Only three natural 
divisions existed : the Atlantic Coast, the Mississippi Valley, 
the Pacific Slope. With these natural lines, other lines of heat 
and cold, of rainfall, of productivity of the soil, and the like, 
did not at all coincide. The geographical divisions ran north 
and south ; the climatic and geological lines ran east and west. 
The accident of settlement, spreading westward across all of 
these natural areas, coinciding with none, forming succes- 
sively small communities favored by this natural advantage, 
fettered by that natural obstacle, did create, as Gerry said, 
"neither the same nation nor different nations." No see- 
tionalization of the country upon economic, political, racial, or 
religious lines was possible.'^ Nature had also failed to pro- 

7 Lincoln's Message to Congress of Dec. 1, 1862, contains a remark- 
ably clear exposition of the facts described in these paragraphs. "That 
portion of the earth's surface which is owned and inhabited by the 
people of the United States is well adapted to be the home of one 
national family, and it is not well adapted for two or more. . . . Phys- 
ically speaking we cannot separate. We cannot remove our respective 
sections from each other, nor build an impassable wall between them. 
. . . There is no line, straight or crooked, suitable for a national 
boundary upon which to divide. Trace through, from east to west, 
upon the line between the free and slave country, and we shall find a 



348 THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 

vide any of the political entities with separate methods of 
communication with the outside world: the abundant water- 
ways served of necessity many rather than one. All the tiny 
groups in existence in 1760, the different parts of the broad 
belt of settlement in 1789, the different sections of the con- 
tinent east of the Mississippi in 1860, were interdependent, in- 
terrelated by economic, political, racial, and religious factors, 
whose potency was already appreciated by the leaders. 

Yet, while the country remained sparsely settled, while the 
most pressing problems were local, States' rights, local sover- 
eignty, were naturally paramount. They coincided best with 
actual conditions. But the growth of each succeeding decade, 
the resultant closer contiguity of States with States, of indi- 
viduals with individuals, the rapid growth of the area of set- 
tlement, were creating common problems of constantly greater 
significance, whose settlement could not long be ignored or 
postponed, and which had necessarily to be settled by general 
discussion and compromise. The nationality of the common 

little more than one-third of its length are rivers, easy to be crossed, 
and populated, or soon to be populated thickly upon both sides; while 
nearly all its remaining length are merely surveyors' lines, over which 
people may walk back and forth without any consciousness of their 
presence. No part of this line can be made any more difficult to pass 
by writing it down on paper or parchment as a national boundary. . . . 
As part of one nation, its people [in the Mississippi Valley] now find, 
and may forever find their way to Europe by New York, to South 
America and Africa by New Orleans, and to Asia by San Francisco. 
But separate our common country into two nations as designed by the 
present rebellion, and every man of this great interior region is thereby 
cut off from some one or more of these outlets — not perhaps by a 
physical barrier, but by embarrassing and onerous trade regulations. 
. . . These outlets, east, west, and south, are indispensable to the well- 
being of the people inhabiting, and to inhabit, this vast interior region. 
. . . Our national strife springs not from our permanent part, not from 
the land we inhabit, not from our national homestead. There is no 
possible severing of this but would multiply and not mitigate evils 
among us. In all its adaptations and aptitudes, it demands union and 
abhors separation. In fact, it would ere long force reunion, however 
much of blood and treasure the separation might have cost. Our strife 
pertains to ourselves — ^to the passing generations of men ; and it can 
without convulsion be hushed forever with the passing of one genera- 
tion." Complete Works, VIII, 110-116. 



THE RESULTS OF THE CIVIL WAR 349 

problems was growing each decade clearer and clearer. 
Withal, the benefits of nationality were becoming rapidly more 
obvious: — the freedom of intercourse between the communi- 
ties so vitally dependent on each other for the continuity of 
economic life, unhampered by the artificial restrictions of 
frontiers and customs barriers; the untrammeled use of the 
natural highways by all ; the freedom of the movement of in- 
dividuals from State to State without loss of civil and legal 
privileges; trade with Europe on equal terms, all this the 
"War made e\ddent to the average man. Travel and military 
campaigns made clear the vastness of the country, its struc- 
ture, its interdependence, and above all, the necessity of the 
common use of the lines of communication through the Mo- 
hawk Valley, the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, and the 
Cumberland Gap. As never before men saw that the West 
was tied to New York and Chicago by the railroads ; that the 
railroads of most consequence were interstate, not local ; that 
the really profitable commerce was interstate and national; 
that the country was still dependent on its market in Europe 
and was therefore tied fast to the Atlantic seaboard by the 
necessity of contact with Europe through the ports. Even 
local trade was vitally dependent on the common use of the 
Hudson, the Delaware, the Mississippi, and the Great Lakes. 
Men began to realize that a central government strong enough 
to prevent individual States from interfering with each 
other's mutual rights was an absolutely indispensable political 
basis for the economic fabric upon whose solidarity and rapid 
development the prosperity of the country depended. 

Indeed, it was slowly borne in upon the people by the ex- 
periences of the War that these natural conditions were the 
real difficulties with ;«'hich the sections had been contending, 
and that they were immutable — to be conquered neither by 
fighting nor argument, factors to be recognized and to which 
all sections must adjust themselves as best as they could. 
They saw too that the pressure of these factors for settlement 
was increased by the growth of the country, by the growing 
density of population, and by the new complexity of the 



350 THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 

economic fabric. The existence of two confederacies would 
not solve the vital problems at all, would make their solution 
incalculably more difficult, and result constantly in issues 
which two sovereign nations could not with dignity com- 
promise nor with indifference leave unsettled, and which they 
could, least of all, decide by an appeal to arms. The prob- 
lems of North, South, and West were not different problems 
but different phases or complementary results of the same 
problems. The railroads and the telegraph were already knit- 
ting the country together and would in the future provide that 
close contact between all its parts and that ease of movement 
between them which would be certain to strengthen those 
forces making for nationality. As Lowell said, the very stars 
in their courses fought for Union.^ 

The result of the War upon the North had been striking. 
The commercial crisis of 1861 and 1862, the new contact with 
the West, the direct trade with Europe thanks to the western 
grain and the new railroad trunk lines, the new industries 
created by the needs of the army, and the new economic wants 
resultant upon the great prosperity of the years 1864 and 
1865, had given industry in all its phases a jolt which had 
advanced it decades in development. The War made the 
North richer as a whole and laid the foundation of many 
individual fortunes. The causes are not far to seek. First 
and foremost, the North had been compelled to draw heavily 
upon its resources of capital and had loaned the govern- 
ment capital which would normally not have been invested in 
industrial securities. The Federal government then prac- 
tically offered bounties to private individuals who were will- 
ing to utilize this capital for the production of military stores. 
Much capital that would normally have been invested for 
permanent returns and of which the community would have 
spent only the interest was spent in its entirety and posterity 
was to repay it. The high prices paid by the government en- 
abled the people to bear heavy direct and indirect taxes, but the 
size of the debt at the end of the war, nearly three billions 
» Atlantic Monthly, January 1861. 



THE RESULTS OF THE CIVIL WAR 351 

of dollars, indicates the amount of capital actually distributed 
among individuals then alive which posterity was to replace. 
Undoubtedly, too, the necessities of the War and the high 
prices stimulated production and investment and caused the 
spurs of ambition to urge the individual onward at a faster 
rate than before. The AVar created a new North, different 
in spirit, in temper, in ambitions, and wealthier, more confi- 
dent, more complaisant than the North of 1860, 

The "War also made apparent the weakness of the economic 
and social structure at the South. The Confederacy had been 
constructed upon the belief that the slave States were inde- 
pendent of the North in fact, and that the political and con- 
stitutional separation would merely adjust theories to reali- 
ties. The War proved the falsity of the notion. What had 
seemed enormous, fabulous wealth melted away the moment 
the blockade became effective, and the South saw only too 
clearly that its economic fabric was an artificial creation, de- 
pendent upon conditions whose continuance could not be as- 
sured by the simple political expedients of passing ordinances 
of secession and making a new constitution. Not the Consti- 
tution of the United States, not the tariff, not Congress, but 
the very character of Southern civilization was the true dif- 
ficulty. The weakness of the Confederacy was less military 
than it was economic and social. There was no substructure 
on which the political entity could rest, no bricks out of which 
to build a new nation. The War did not itself destroy the 
slavocracy: it removed of necessity those props on which the 
slave power had depended and made apparent the frailty and 
artificiality of the structure. The old regime at the South 
was not destroyed; it collapsed. In the culture of cotton by 
forced labor there was no proper economic basis for an inde- 
pendent nation and the War proved it even before the fighting 
began in earnest. 

The artificial factors were now evident. The high degree 
of profit obtained from the cotton-culture had been primarily 
due to the unexampled fertility of the virgin soil in the river- 
bottoms, wdiicli yielded enormous returns even to extensive 



352 THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 

cultivation by the crudest of forced labor. The profit had 
also depended on the growth of the demand for raw cotton in 
the North and in Europe at the same rate at which the 
planters had increased the supply. That the demand before 
1860 scarcely ever failed to equal the supply was a remark- 
able fact, but there was no reason to suppose it would con- 
tinue indefinitely to do so. Above all, freedom of access to 
the Northern and European markets, a merchant marine and 
cheap freights were even more essential. In the nature of 
things, the continued cooperation of all these factors could not 
be indefinitely assured. The amount of virgin soil was limited 
by Nature. An increase in the value of slaves ; a decrease in 
the proportionate return ; a falling off of the demand ; the 
discovery of a new source of supply; interference with free- 
dom of intercourse; expensive freights; the alteration of any 
single factor might destroy the profitableness of the invest- 
ment, and such a change might be produced at any moment 
by natural forces over which no human agency could exert 
the slightest influence. The War stopped intercourse with 
Europe and with the North by the interposition of a highly 
artificial barrier, the blockade, which the growing of cotton 
had not provided the South with any means to remove. The 
whole fabric of the slave power instantly crumbled and died. 
The South found itself pauperized, without any industrial 
life at all. Its land and slaves, fabulously valuable on paper, 
potentially valuable for growing cotton, were an utterly worth- 
less encumbrance when one single factor in the artificial struc- 
ture of Southern life was removed. The South was not inde- 
pendent; it was absolutely dependent upon the North, the 
West, and Europe for existence at all. The War proved it. 
The only arable land in use was not suitable for grain; the 
only agricultural tools the planters had were inadequate for 
the diversified intensive agriculture needed to sustain the life 
of the community; the only skill the millions of slaves pos- 
sessed was valueless in the crisis and they were too ignorant 
and too lacking in adaptability to be forced into new in- 
dustries in time to be of any avail. And even had they 



THE RESULTS OF THE CIVIL WAR 353 

possessed adaptability, the necessary raw materials were lack- 
ing. 

It began to be evident to the Southerners that the cotton- 
culture had in its nature prevented the growth of a strong, 
well-knit community by locating the people on large planta- 
tions miles from each other, by putting a premium on the 
occupation of vast areas of soil only a tithe of which was in 
actual use. Towns and cities had not been able to grow ; com- 
munity life, the daily contact of the people, had been re- 
duced to a minimum, and they had not acquired the habit 
of acting in concert nor learned the necessity of cooperation. 
States' rights had thrived; the individual had been unham- 
pered by State and central government; and the very success 
of local government made difficult the sort of common action 
which the War made imperative. The social and political 
structure of the South did not furnish a proper basis even for 
strong State governments and still less afforded adequate sup- 
port to a central government struggling with the administra- 
tive difficulties of a great conflict. 

The separateness of the Southerners had also prevented the 
growth of a system of transportation which would adequately 
connect the various scattered communities with each other. 
The splendid river systems, eked out by a few miles of nar- 
row-gauge railroad here and there, put every plantation into 
cheap and easy contact with the markets for cotton and made 
a network of railroads, east and west, north and south, need- 
less for the ordinary daily life of the community before the 
War. But, when the Federal gunboats had occupied the sea- 
coast and the rivers, the only universal system of transporta- 
tion the South had possessed was lost, and it found itself with- 
out adequate means of communication and unable to utilize 
promptly and efficiently such resources as it did possess. The 
truth was that South Carolina, Alabama, Louisiana and the 
rest had been in contact with the North and with Europe far 
more than with each other ; they w^ere not even interdependent. 
Not the South as a whole, but literally every State and al- 
most every plantation was dependent upon easy and direct 



354 THE RISE OP THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 

contact with the North and with Europe. The Southern 
States had never actually cooperated with each other in eco- 
nomic, political, or constitutional life. "While the leaders had 
lived together at Washington and had voted as a unit in the 
Senate, the States at home had gone each its own way. The 
Confederacy itself was an artificial aggregation of small iso- 
lated communities which were for the first time attempting life 
in common. The South was a geographical expression, not a 
nation, not even an entity. With its constitutional professions 
the facts did not agree. The War made strikingly apparent 
what had always been true. 

The vital objection to slavery was that it was undemo- 
cratic and contrary to every legal and social principle of 
American life. It created obviously a three-caste system, the 
slave-holding whites, the non-slave-holding whites, and the 
slaves. Forced labor was and always will be nominally 
cheaper than free labor and the very existence of the slave 
deprived the poor white of economic opportunity. He could 
not compete in the cotton fields with the negro; so long as 
the degree of profit in the cotton-culture so greatly exceeded 
the profit of producing anything else at the South, he was 
excluded from any other industry, and would exist merely 
by the labor of his own hands on the small portion of less 
productive soil that might fall to his lot. Slavery, which 
robbed the poor white of his economic, political, and social 
freedom, put the power and wealth into the hands of a small 
oligarchy. In addition, slavery was undemocratic because 
it deprived the negroes and poor whites alike of opportunity 
for individual development and aggrandizement. From the 
lack of stimulus to progress, from the general lack of edu- 
cation, from the realization among the planters that any 
improvement of the slaves and poor whites threatened the 
extent and security of their own control, resulted that stag- 
nation of community life which prevented any truly organic 
development. The Confederacy was a democracy whose fun- 
damental principles were daily abrogated by its own life. It 
was an oligarchy which had theoretically renounced the use 



THE RESULTS OF THE CIVIL WAR 355 

of those administrative and legal forms by which alone 
oligarchies had governed great masses of men. A democratic 
community in which four-fifths of the population was excluded 
by artificial restrictions from actual participation in the life 
of the community was a house built upon the sands, certain 
to perish under the first stress of unfavorable circumstances. 
An oligarchy under the forms of democracy carried the seeds 
of its destruction in its own constitution. Both were doomed. 
The actual social and political structure of the Confederacy 
was utterly inconsistent with and repugnant to its constitu- 
tion. The "War made the fact appallingly clear. The South- 
erners saw it the clearest, for the presence of the poor whites 
in the army side by side with the old ruling class had been 
a lesson in democracy for both and had opened their eyes 
to their common humanity. The willingness of the Southern 
Government to free the slaves who would serve in the army, 
the comparatively slight regret expressed at the South over 
the abolition of slavery, both showed the working of the 
leaven of democracy under the powerful stimulus of circum- 
stances. 

Above all, the realization that slavery was undemocratic 
and unprogressive convinced Lincoln, long before the war 
was over, that a democratic nation could neither be preserved, 
restored, or created unless this vitally undemocratic institu- 
tion were abolished.* The South had not been one with the 
North because this "peculiar institution" had been undem- 
ocratic; and it could not become democratic and begin to 
develop in harmony with the genius of American institutions 
until slavery was destroyed.^* He saw, however, in 1865, that 

» "He wished the reunion of all the States perfected, and so effected 
as to remove all causes of disturbance in the future; and to attain this 
end, it was necessary that the original disturbing cause [slavery] 
should, if possible, be rooted out." Nicolay and Hay, Complete Works, 
X, 353. Slavery "must be always and everywhere hostile to the prin- 
ciples of republican government ; justice and the national safety demand 
its utter and complete extirpation from the soil of the republic." Ibid., 
X, 119. See also 191, 193-7. 

8a "The popular understanding has been gradually enlightened as to 
the real causes of the ^Yar, and in consequence of that enlightenment, a 



356 THE RISE OF THE A^IERICAN PEOPLE 

the War had already done the work. The Planter class had 
actually been dethroned; the old social and economic struc- 
ture had collapsed and had actually freed the poor whites 
from their shackles; many slaves had already left the cotton 
plantations; others would follow as soon as opportunity 
offered. The downfall of the old slave power was a fact and 
there remained only the declaration of the freedom of the 
negro from legal slavery to make the emancipation of the 
poor white a reality, the future development of the negro 
a possibility, and the building of a new South upon truly 
democratic principles a certainty. The obstacles hindering 
the growth of democracy had been artificial and not funda- 
mental, and the War had removed them. Under any circum- 
stances, a complete readjustment of economic and social life 
at the South would be necessary; the process might be long; 
the suffering to individuals would be considerable ; but Lincoln 
felt that the North owed it to the true South to abolish by con- 
stitutional amendment the artificial fetters with which custom 
and tradition had hitherto allowed the oligarchy of great plant- 
ers to hamper the development of the community at large. The 
North must not nullify the result of the War — the actual 
downfall of the old economic and social fabric built on 
slavery. It must insist that the New South should be a 
product of true democracy. 

The War, nevertheless, resulted in an extreme economic 
exhaustion of the South. It had destroyed the old fabric 
and had put nothing in its place. Before the War there 
had been a few enormous private fortunes, a considerable 
number of well-to-do families, while the great majority of 
the poor whites and free negroes as well as the slaves had 
been on the very margin of subsistence. The great fortunes 
had flown in the first year of the War, and the produce 
taxes levied in kind and the forceable seizure of property 

purpose has grown up, defining itself slowly into clearer consciousness, 
to finish the War in the only way that will hcep it finished, by rooting 
out the evil principle [slavery] from which it sprang." Lowell in the 
Atlantic Monthly, October 18G4, p. 572. 



THE RESULTS OF THE CIVIL WAR 357 

by the commissary department for the use of the army had 
pretty well deprived ever}^ one who had anything at all of 
nearly all he had. Though the South had never been wealthy 
except on paper, though its richest men had possessed large 
incomes rather than tangible wealth whose continued ex- 
istence was assured, the War had taken from the community 
the little it had possessed. The Confederacy was bankrupt 
in 1861 ; its citizens had little left in 1865. Even the cotton, 
from whose sale once the War was over many had expected 
to recoup their fortunes, was confiscated by the Northern 
government. It should never be forgotten that the poverty 
of the individual Southerner, the dethroning of the planters, 
the enfranchisement of the poor white, the emancipation of 
the negro were direct results of four years of war. Recon- 
struction intensified the suffering but was not its cause. The 
inevitable difficulties of readjustment were certain to cause 
suffering to many individuals, though the community as a 
whole was benefiting from the change. 

But upon the great constitutional and legal issues, out of 
which hostilities had arisen, the War decided nothing. The 
great fundamental issues of American development — the re- 
lation of the States to each other, to the individual citizen, 
and to the central government; the economic dependence of 
the country upon Europe ; the questions of a sound and ade- 
quate currency, of the tariff, and of the public lands — the 
War did not settle at all. It could not; moral, ethical, legal, 
constitutional issues are not solved by fighting. The War 
simply decided that in the discussion and formulation of a 
solution, the North should play the preponderant part and 
that the solution should be in harmony with the principles 
of nationality and democracy as the North understood them. 
The War made the most important single element in the 
situation the opinion of the North. It was now necessary 
for the North to find out what its opinion was. 

The logic of facts at the close of the War made the dis- 
cussion and settlement of the great problems peculiarly diffi- 
cult and the arrival at anything like a decision mutually; 



358 THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 

agreeable to all parties in both sections practically impossible. 
The mere fact that in a great war, costing thousands of lives 
and billions of dollars, the Northern armies had been victo- 
rious, was to most men proof that a great issue had been at 
stake about which there was an ascertainable right and wrong. 
Did not victory in fact show that the North had been right? 
If there was no right and wrong about it, and if the South 
had not been wrong, why had the War been fought at all? 
It was unthinkable to the Northern men in 1865 that they 
had conquered in a fight for a principle and had espoused the 
wrong side. If so, the War was not only a mistake and a 
blunder, but a crime of unbelievable, horrible magnitude. 
It was inevitable that the men who won the War should 
have concluded, quite aside from history, precedents, morality, 
and law, that they had decided a great question in the right. 
Granting, then, as an axiom which few Northern minds ques- 
tioned, that the South had been wrong, should she not be 
punished for it or at least forced to acknowledge that she 
had been wrong and compelled to take such steps as should 
prevent the recurrence of that wrong? Nothing else galled 
the South quite so much as this bit of logic. The very idea 
that they had been "wrong" rankled in the Southern mind; 
the very indefiniteness of the feeling, the entire lack of any 
specific thing which had been the wrong of wrongs, embittered 
the relations of the two sections. All of this feeling was 
intensified a hundred-fold by the assassination of Lincoln. 
Many at the North who had talked before of "securities" 
began to insist upon "punishment" and revenge. 

To the Southern gentleman, who had governed the Con- 
federacy before and during the War, there was also a logic 
of facts. For whatever reason, justly or unjustly, his estates 
were ruined and his fortune gone; he saw his friends in the 
same condition ; he saw Northern soldiers quartered on the 
poverty-stricken and exliausted country and knew that, what- 
ever legal excuse was offered, they were "conquerors" and 
held him and his in "subjection." There was too the un- 
doubted existence of the negro and the poor white, whom 



THE RESULTS OF THE CIVIL WAR 359 

he had despised aud ruled; the War had raised the negro 
to the level of the poor white and had brought the old 
aristocracy down to the level of both. It seemed almost too 
much to bear that at this same time the North should be 
prosperous and reveling in luxury. At both North and 
South, the more sober and better informed men were anxious 
to return to amity and peace and to deal with one another 
like brothers, with a sympathetic forbearance on the one hand 
of taunts about the past and an eager acceptance on the other 
of the inevitable changes. It was perhaps too much to expect 
that it could have been so. Four years of war left behind 
a legacy that no one desired but of which none could rid 
himself. 



XXVI 

THE ISSUE OF RECONSTRUCTION 

The Civil War grew out of a misunderstanding^ between 
honest and sincere men. So did the Reconstruction. Let 
us not deny that charity to the Northern Reconstructionists 
which the slave-holders of 1850 have received. Even the 
carpet-bagger and the scalawag had convictions. As we must 
renounce the idea that the War was caused by a conspiracy 
of Southern planters solely to extend and maintain slavery, 
so must we renounce the idea that the North intended Re- 
construction to humiliate the South. Much that was done 
was unintentional, the result of the disagreement of 
honest men on both sides. Indeed, in the study of Recon- 
struction, there is scarcely another fact so conspicuous as the 
unexpected turn of events. The whole nation was groping 
around a problem whose real lineaments it did not know, 
like a blind man making his way about in an unfamiliar room. 
Reconstruction was an attempt to settle nearly all the great 
issues of American development, whose factors had been so 
altered by the War as to produce in each new features so 
radically different from the old as to change the problem 
itself beyond recognition. 

Indeed, we are dealing with the construction of a new 
nation, not with the reconstruction, preservation, alteration, 
or restoration of the status quo before the War. The North, 

i"I think very much of the ill feeling that has existed and still 
exists between the people in the section from which I came and the 
people here [Washington, D. C] is dependent upon a misunderstanding 
of one another." Lincoln in reply to the greeting of the Mayor of 
Washington, D. C, Feb. 27, 1861. Nicolay and Hay, Complete Works, 
VI, 165. 

360 



THE ISSUE OF RECONSTRUCTION 361 

the South, the Union, the Constitution, the States, the Senate, 
the House, the Presidency, the people had all been so vitally 
changed that the readjustment of each to the others required 
literally the construction of a new social and constitutional 
fabric. Nor was the necessity less because in the majority 
of instances the constitutional change was implicit rather than 
explicit ; to be read into old phrases, not formally expressed ; 
a difference to be applied in living rather than to be recorded 
in line and precept. All national politics and institutions were 
to be honestly tested for the first time by the concept of nation- 
ality, as Lincoln had made the nation conscious of it. In 
all social and economic problems at the South, the emancipation 
of the negro by proclamation and by the Thirteenth Amend- 
ment, ratified in 1865, had introduced a factor entirely un- 
known to everj^ one. The political and economic emancipation 
of the poor white by the actual destruction of the older agri- 
cultural fabric had placed in the numerical majority in the 
South a class which hated the old planter class and the negro 
alike with vehemence. 

Scarcely less important was the alteration in the relative 
prominence and authority of the executive as compared to the 
legislature. The exigencies of the War had compelled the use 
by Lincoln of extraordinary powers, which had been viewed 
with suspicion and downright hostility by Congress and by 
many individuals, and whose use had by the logic of facts 
completely reversed the traditional position of executive and 
legislature, robbing the latter of its preeminence and initiative. 
Nothing could have been predicted with greater certainty than 
that the close of the War and the consequent cessation of the 
imperative necessary for the recognition of executive discre- 
tion would father a determined attempt by Congress to deprive 
the executive of his new authority and to reassert once more 
the legislative supremacy. Without doubt, the doctrine of 
nationality abrogated the older concept of the State, as well 
North as South, and introduced in practice the theoretical 
notion of the paramount authority of the Federal government 
over the individual citizen as superior in obligation to that of 



362 THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 

his State. Whatever currency this idea had previously ob- 
tained, it had certainly never before been a precept upon 
which the actual working of the Federal system had been 
based and the close of the War clearly raised a series of most 
important practical issues which were to be adjudicated by the 
courts in the light of this new national reading of the Consti- 
tution. A difference of opinion with the States, so recently 
members of the Confederacy, was highly probable, and logic 
and precedent for several views of their status, past and 
present, were not long in appearing. In the guise of the 
payment of the Federal debt, and of the provision of a sound 
currency to replace the paper money adopted as an expedient 
during the War, rose all the old formidable financial issues — 
America's dependence on Europe, the necessity for a medium 
of exchange, the dependence of the South and West upon the 
commercial cities on the Atlantic coast, the necessity of dis- 
tributing the specie evenly throughout the community and of 
the prevention of hoarding it. All of these vital factors re- 
acted upon each other again and again and complicated still 
further a problem already difficult in the extreme. The con- 
struction of a new South in harmony with the new notions 
of nationality and democracy involved sweeping and significant 
changes in industry, in legislation, in substantive law, in ad- 
ministration, in social life which certainly could not be com- 
pleted without tremendous difficulty and without suffering to 
many and many an innocent individual. 

In studying this "great confusion, officially styled the Re- 
construction of the Southern States, " ^ it is absolutely essential 
to read political and social movements in the light of the War. 
A situation, itself complex in the extreme, was tangled almost 
beyond the possibility of belief, by the actual conditions in 
the South and in Washington. 

The presence of the Northern armies constantly reminded 
the Southerners that the new settlement was really being im- 
posed upon them by the North, whatever legal or ethical 
grounds might be alleged in an endeavor to conceal the un- 

2 W. G. Brown in Atlantic Monthly, May 1901, Vol. LXXXVII, 634. 



THE ISSUE OF RECONSTRUCTION 363 

concealable. The only too evident ruin of all the wealthy, 
the certainty that the poor whites and negroes would be able 
to adjust themselves to the conditions of democratic freedom 
only slowly and painfully, the inevitable bitterness and rancor 
among the old planters at seeing themselves "degraded" to 
the level of the poor white and of the negro; the latter 's 
equally inevitable elation, only too sure of blatant expression, 
at his elevation to an equality with the oligarchy, were all un- 
fortunately insistent elements. The Southerners had embraced 
with real fervor and enthusiasm the new concept of nationality 
and had no intention of relinquishing it but were somewhat 
shaken in their belief that all would now be well by the 
discovery that the new nationality was bound tightly to a new 
concept of democracy which included the negro. That the 
United States should be one, they could believe expedient ; but 
that the negro was industrially, legally, politically, socially 
the equal of the white man, they could not credit. This was 
a plain issue of fact and the evidence of their senses as 
well as the traditions of two centuries and a half forbade 
their accepting such a dictum without clear proof of its 
verity. The War had honestly made the North and South 
nationalists; but it was powerless to remodel, in a moment 
as it were, their social, moral, and ethical standards. The 
negro was no different after the War from what he had been 
before; if anything, he was less capable, less industrious, less 
honest, less moral; and he was surely not to be endowed 
with ability, education, and energy by making speeches in the 
Senate or by passing constitutional amendments. The logic of 
the situation was stronger than theory: the Southerners who 
had always known the negro saw that he could not be other- 
wise than he was ; the Northerners, who had never known the 
negro at all, were able to believe honestly that the striking 
off of his shackles would as suddenly reveal hitherto unexpected 
qualities and his possession of the common heritage of hu- 
manity. To the Southerner, fundamental racial and economic 
facts stood in the way of the negro's actual freedom and 
equality; to many excited Northerners, only the artificial re- 



364 THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 

straints of laws and constitutions had hidden the facts which 
had always existed, and which needed now merely to be made 
apparent. Here again was a clash of opinion certain to affect 
vitally the attitude of all parties and individuals to the new 
settlement. 

Most apparent and important of all, the men in control 
at Washington naturally regarded as a national calamity the 
bare suggestion that they were not to direct the creation of 
the new national fabric, the hint that they were not the men 
best qualified to undertake it. Had not their winning of the 
War proved it? Should the results of the War be lost by 
taking the control of the settlement out of the hands of the 
friends of freedom? Indeed, it was difficult for them to be- 
lieve that the opinions of Northern men who had opposed the 
War or criticized its conduct, of Southern men who had fought 
in the Confederate army, had any right to consideration upon 
the problems which the War had bequeathed, could be other- 
wise than inharmonious with the splendid principles upon 
which the War had been fought and won. It was clear that 
the most vital issues concerned the interpretation of the Consti- 
tution and statutes in the light of the new concepts, involved 
the passage of new legislation conceived in their spirit, and 
that all could be easily invalidated and the result of the War 
destroyed by hostile or unsympathetic interpretations. Thus 
was promptly injected into issues already too complex, the 
question of the balance of parties at the North, the personal 
reputation and reward of the men who had won the War, 
the importance of the army as a factor in politics at the 
polls and elsewhere, and the influence, interrelation, and in- 
teraction of all these upon each other and upon the old 
quarrels of the executive and legislature, of North and South, 
of the States and the Federal government. 

The reorganization of the South was certain at best to 
cause suffering to many individuals, and required forbearance 
and consideration from the North. The actual conditions at 
the South and at Washington rendered almost inevitable 
mutual misunderstandings which could not fail greatly to 



THE ISSUE OF RECONSTRUCTION 365 

increase the sum total of suffering at the South and strain 
almost to the breaking-point the new national bond which 
the fighting of four years had been needed to create. The 
manner in which Reconstruction was undertaken became a 
new obstacle in the way of the realization of nationality. 
To make it a permanent obstacle, the men who had won the 
War seem to have unconsciously done their best; that it 
caused only temporary difficulty, was due to the forbearance, 
the splendid patriotism, and the statesmanship of the North- 
ern conservatives who had opposed the War and of the 
Southern men once enrolled under the Stars and Bars. We 
should never forget that if the War was won by a part 
of the nation to create nationality, the nation as it now 
stands is nearly as much the work of those who loyally 
accepted the true results of the War after it was over and 
who narrowly managed to prevent the destruction of the 
new nation at the hands of its friends as soon as it had 
been created. The South as well as the North, the Eecon- 
struction as well as the War, played a vital part in making 
us one people, bone of our bone, flesh of our flesh. 

As was inevitable, an issue of so many sides and significant 
aspects, none of which in any sense were mutually exclusive, 
none of which could by any possibility be settled except in 
relation to the rest, presented for that very reason, even to 
the honest and energetic, one aspect so much more vital in 
its effect on their personal predilections, ideals, and ambitions 
that it stood in their minds for the whole complex tangle 
of needs and desirabilities. The issue of Reconstruction was 
neither political, constitutional, legal, social, ethical, nor eco- 
nomic, but an extraordinarily complicated network created 
by the interrelation and interaction of all. The first criminal 
error committed, therefore, in all honesty and good faith, 
was the attempt to deal with it from only one point of 
view. Presidential Reconstruction assumed that the question 
was legal and formal, to be decided by the constitutional 
theories upon which the War had been fought. Congress 
promptly saw that there were political questions of the utmost 



366 THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 

consequence involved and that the South would be hard pressed 
to deal alone with the numerous temporary difficulties gi'ow- 
ing out of the conditions actually in existence. The social 
reformers soon appreciated that the presidential plan really 
left the South nearly complete discretion in the rebuilding 
of the economic and social fabric and they instantly objected 
to such a ' ' sacrifice ' ' of the negro. To them, the transcendent 
issue was social and ethical, the negroes the most important 
class of the community to be protected and assisted over the 
transition from bondage to freedom. Each of these plans 
was based upon an important element in the situation; each 
committed the pardonable blunder of assuming that element 
to be the only issue of real consequence. None, therefore, 
met the prerequisite of statesmanship, — the open recognition 
that the problems were interrelated and must be solved to- 
gether with due regard for each other. All three remedies 
were applied in succession, and as each left unsolved impor- 
tant problems, another sovereign emollient was brought for- 
ward. The result was almost indescribable confusion and 
the intensification and prolongation of the natural difficulties 
of adjustment at the South, and the trebling of suffering 
for many individuals. 

The greatest trouble of all rose out of a misunderstand- 
ing. During the War, Lincoln had announced a theory of 
executive ''reconstruction" of the seceded States which he 
applied before the end of the War to those States in the 
hands of the Union armies. He assumed that secession was 
unconstitutional; no State could "get out of the Union;" no 
State had ever been a State at all "out of the Union;" and 
the mere fact that the Southern States had attempted to 
secede upon this mistaken theory had not in the least altered 
their constitutional status. The Southern States were still 
members of the Union, and the process of their reinstate- 
ment would therefore be simple in the extreme. So soon as 
the President was assured that a loyal State government was 
peaceably performing the usual civil functions, he should by 
proclamation make that fact known to the country and to 



THE ISSUE OF RECONSTRUCTION 887 

Congress, and thus by an executive announcement of the actual 
fact, the State would once more take its place among its 
sisters. No "reconstruction" would be necessary, for there 
had been no legal breach of the constitutional fabric; the 
States would merely recommence their old life and the Presi- 
dent should announce the moment when it began. Naturally, 
the President should exercise his discretion in deciding what 
tests should indicate its beginning. 

This theory was certainly that on which the War had been 
fought and that approved by all parties at Washington during 
the first years of its continuance. The Democratic slogan 
had even been "Restore the Union as it was." On the 
whole, the terms proposed by the Federal government in the 
various abortive negotiations with the Confederacy had in view 
the ' * restoration ' ' of the Federal bond as the North understood 
it. Lincoln recognized Tennessee and Louisiana as States in 
1864, and, though a clash of opinion between the President 
and Congress was already apparent before Lincoln's death, 
Johnson continued his policy. The measures he prescribed in 
]\Iay 1865, were of the simplest. A proclamation offered 
amnesty to all taking an oath of future loyalty to the United 
States, and the prominent Confederates, who were excepted 
from the amnesty by classes, were to be pardoned by the Presi- 
dent when they had taken the oath and petitioned for ex- 
ecutive clemency. The President next appointed provisional 
governors in the various Southern States, who caused an 
election of delegates to a constitutional convention by such 
of the electorate qualified to vote at the date of secession as had 
already taken the oath of loyalty. By proclamations the 
civil departments of the Federal government once more began 
the execution of the Federal laws in the several States. [When 
Congress met in December, all the Southern States had in 
pursuance of this plan repealed the ordinances of secession, 
had adopted new constitutions abolishing slavery, and, with 
two exceptions, had repudiated the war debt of the Confeder- 
acy. The legislatures had met, the executive officers had taken 
their seats, the Federal officers were executing the United 



368 THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 

States statutes. United States senators and representatives 
had been chosen, and, with two exceptions, all had adopted 
the Thirteenth Amendment abolishing slavery. In view of 
these facts, the President had by proclamation declared the 
cessation of armed resistance, the restoration of intercourse, 
and the end of the blockade. The troops had not been with- 
drawn nor the right to the writ of habeas corpus restored, 
but, in his message to Congress of December 1865, Johnson 
made it clear that, in his opinion, nothing remained to be done 
to complete the process of restoring the States to their former 
places but the acceptance of the newly-elected senators and 
representatives by Congress. 



XXVII 

CONGRESSIONAL RECONSTRUCTION: ITS CAUSES 
AND ITS METHODS 

To the Congressional leaders, the issue was by no means so 
simple. They saw obvious objections on political, constitu- 
tional, and social grounds to any recognition of the presidential 
solution. Their overwhelmingly important objection was that 
the process was entirely executive and created or assumed 
powers extending an executive authority already too large. 
Congress had always been jealous of the President. The 
enormous accession of power thrust upon him by the War had 
been flatly contrary to the general tradition since the earliest 
Colonial times of the supremacy of the legislature over the 
executive, and Congress had during the War ill concealed 
its impatience and hostility. While the crisis actually existed, 
it was felt that constitutional scruples should be pushed to 
one side; but now that the War was over the pent-up wrath, 
suspicion, hatred which had accumulated during the long four 
years burst forth over Johnson's demand that Congress should 
tamely accept at his dictation the settlement of all the ques- 
tions bequeathed by the War. That the executive should have 
fought and won the War galled Congress inexpressibly ; that 
the Presidency had drawn from the War and from Lincoln's 
personal prestige an extraordinary accession of power and an 
importance as compared to the legislature which could never 
be entirely regained, the angry senators and representatives 
fully appreciated. But that the executive should already have 
issued his fiat upon the results of the War, should not have 
consulted them even as a formal courtesy as to the proper 
course to be pursued in the numerous constitutional difficulties 
involved, was more than the men who had repressed their 

369 



370 THE EISE OF THE MIERICAN PEOPLE 

hatred so long could have been expected to bear. They viewed 
all of Johnson's acts and decisions "wdth supercilious suspicion, 
simply and solely because they were executive acts. Of the 
facts of the situation at the South, of the probable consequences 
of a quarrel between Executive and Congress, they recked 
little. To them, the whole structure of the Federal Constitu- 
tion, which the North had fought the War to preserve, was 
being destroyed by the usurpations of the executive. States' 
rights was a specter ; presidential domination of Federal poli- 
cies and means was stalking abroad as a giant whose head 
topped the clouds. Lincoln had taught Congress only too 
well that the legislative power could deal only with new 
policies, and now if this greatest subject for new legislation, 
the results of the "War, could thus coolly be dealt with by 
Johnson by proclamation and fiat, the President could literally 
usurp by a similar process of interpretation all the functions 
of Congress and reduce that body to a nonentity. The mem- 
bers of the House felt themselves called to be the saviors of 
the country from a new and greater peril than States' rights 
and slavery. With them agreed thousands both North and 
South who had been alienated and disgusted by what they 
considered the arbitrary and unconstitutional acts of Lincoln 
and Davis, and who had impatiently awaited the end of the 
War as a time when such "usurpations" would certainly cease. 
The strength and intensity of the determination to put an end 
to the extension of executive authority is a chief factor in the 
drama of Reconstruction, and in Washington it almost cer- 
tainly dwarfed all others. 

The other objection to the presidential theory was its fail- 
ure to take into account the actual situation at the South. It 
was all very well to declare that the States were what they 
had been, but the actual facts contradicted the theory; the 
Southern States had been actually out of the Union for four 
years ; ^ the civil administration, the economic and social 

1 In a Eulogy on Lincoln delivered by Sumner in Boston in 1865, 
he took issue squarely with the presidential plans. "There can be no 
question here whether a State is in the Union or out of it. This is but 



CONGRESSIONAL RECONSTRUCTION 371 

structure had been literally destroyed by the War, and new 
State governments upon a new national and democratic basis 
were to be set up. Furthermore, it was entirely clear that 
the roving negroes and rascally thieves then thronging many 
parts of the South were not to be successfully restrained by 
the sort of loosely-organized civil government which had 
formerly existed there. Excited orators denounced Johnson 
for closing his eyes to the obvious facts of the situation, and, 
to their logic and reasoning, the Northern interpretation of 
the Southern efforts to grapple with the most imperative proT)- 
lems lent only too much color. Johnson had handed over to 
the men, who had seceded to preserve slavery, discretion to 
deal with the freedmen, and they had used it as he should 
have anticipated. 

Needless to add, the excited enemies of the President in 
Washington and throughout the North had only a faint 
adumbration of the practical difficulties of the negro problem 
at the South, and, with the almost universal exaggeration of 
the negro 's capacity, virtue, and honesty then prevalent, they 
quite inevitably misinterpreted the experiments the South- 
erners based upon the practical difficulties whose very ex- 
istence the glorification of the negro forbade the North to 
credit. The Emancipation Proclamation of 1862 and the 
Thirteenth Amendment did not contemplate the need of in- 
struction to the negroes concerning the use of their new free- 
dom. It was, indeed, inconceivable to the enthusiasts that a 
man should not know what to do with freedom, should be in- 
capable of applying freedom to the problems of life as he him- 
self had to live it. There was no insurrection or universal out- 
break of anarchy and bloodshed as the ante-bellum slavery ad- 
vocates had predicted; but the millennium of freedom antici- 
pated by the anti-slavery men was patently unrealized. 
Many negroes, especially the house servants, remained with 
their old masters, faithful, loyal, contented ; but thousands 

a phrase on which discussion is useless. Look at the actual fact. Here 
all will agree. The old governments are vacated, and this is enough." 
Charles Sumner, Eulogy on Lincoln, 59. Boston, 1865. 



372 THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 

had enlisted in the Union armies, or had followed as laborers, 
digging in the trenches or driving baggage wagons, and were 
now stranded by the cessation of the "War, ]\Iany thousands 
had left the interior of the cotton States, as food grew scarce, 
or had wandered around merely to find out whether they 
could, and had congregated along the rivers where the Fed- 
eral government had attempted to feed them in contraband 
camps controlled by the army. These roving thousands had 
somehow to be provided for and it was perfectly patent to 
any one in contact with them that, as long as the government 
would feed them, they had no intention of working. Other 
crowds like them clustered in the cities and towns, restless, 
lazy, shiftless, committing freely innumerable minor crimes, a 
constant menace to the peace of the community. On the 
plantations, petty crimes and thieving had been personal of- 
fenses against the master only and were still to the negroes 
not offenses against any law involving trials in courts. The 
removal of the master's authority left them almost uncon- 
trolled by any legislation then in force. To control their 
criminal propensities was essential, but to force them to do 
enough work to support themselves and relieve the white com- 
munity of the hardship of doing the work necessary to sup- 
port everybody, was the very first and most important step 
in the economic construction of a new South. The chief 
source of labor for growing the only commodity of value had 
not only ceased to be available in the cotton fields, but had 
become an overwhelming economic burden. That the bulk 
of the negroes had not the slightest intention of working was 
evident; that it would ruin the South beyond repair to be 
forced to feed between two and three million mouths from the 
labor of the whites and a million or so of blacks was eminently 
clear. 

The Federal government had seen the difficulty and had 
created the Freedman's Bureau in March 1865, to care for 
the blacks and their interests, to shield them from the specu- 
lators and sharpers, white and black, already imposing on 
their inexperience, and to allot to them the abandoned planta- 



CONGRESSIONAL RECONSTRUCTION 373 

tions and furnish enough tools and seeds to start them on the 
new life. To facilitate the work, jurisdiction was given the 
Bureau over all controversies to which a negro was a party, 
including family relations and marriage. In particular, the 
Bureau was to take cognizance of all the means and methods 
by which the whites sought to secure the labor of the freed- 
men and was to guarantee them against contracts which should 
be the equivalent of slavery for life. Most of the appointees 
of the Bureau were military officers who worked in conjunc- 
tion with the army in the district. To the Southerners, the 
Bureau was a diabolical device to perpetuate the military con- 
trol of the South and humiliate the whites before the negro, 
a method of compelling by force recognition of the social 
equality with the blacks which the whites were determined 
not to concede. 

The resentment and reaction at the South caused the inser- 
tion of clauses in the new constitutions denying with vehe- 
mence the equality of the white and black races and affirming 
that negroes could not be citizens of the United States. To 
coerce the negroes into working, ''vagrancy" acts were passed 
in several States in the fall of 1865 which declared it an of- 
fense for negroes over eighteen years old to be without ''law- 
ful employment or business" or to be found "unlawfully as- 
sembling themselves together either in the day or night time. ' ' 
For this offense the negro was to be fined $50, and, if he should 
not pay his fine within five days, he should be hired out by 
the sheriff to the man who would pay the fine and costs, in re- 
turn for the shortest period of service, preference being given 
to the negro's previous "employer." Negroes under eighteen 
years of age, "orphans or the children of parents who could 
not or would not support them," were to be apprenticed until 
twenty-one years old by the Clerk of the Probate Court at his 
discretion, preferably to the former owner. Mississippi made 
a similar provision for negroes who did not pay their taxes 
and then levied a poll tax of $1 a head on all negroes "for 
the support of the poor." The criminal statutes provided 
fines and compulsory work to be done by the criminal for 



374 THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 

the man who would pay the fine in return for the shortest 
period of service in such elastic offenses as "malicious mis- 
chief," "insulting gestures," "seditious speeches," or "any 
other misdemeanor." 

Granting that these acts were necessary to replace the 
negro in the economic fabric and secure his cooperation in 
supporting the community of which he was now a citizen, 
they were certain to create the impression in the North that 
the Southerners intended to restore actual slavery under the 
guise of apprenticeship or as a punishment for debt or crime, 
and, to hasten and facilitate the completion of the process, 
had put acts on the statute-book defining vagrancy and crime 
in broad and inclusive terms which ipso facto made every 
negro guilty. They had provided compulsory work for 
negroes in debt and had then passed laws which instantly put 
every negro into debt. Nor could the constant reference to 
his "former employer" or owner as the fittest person to be- 
come his guardian or jailor fail to lend verisimilitude to all 
these charges of a revival of slavery. 

Such statutes seemed to Congress evidence that the spirit 
in which the South proposed to interpret the Thirteenth 
Amendment was by no means that in which it had been 
passed. To this unfortunate misunderstanding, fuel was 
added by the election of men, who had been especially promi- 
nent in the administrative and military service of the Confed- 
eracy to be senators and representatives of the United States 
from the new State governments reconstructed by the Presi- 
dent. If such men could at once return to Congress to be- 
gin over again the old debates, why had the War been fought ? 
Could the North ask less recognition of the defeat of the Con- 
federacy, demand less evidence of an honest intention to ac- 
cept the result, than the choice by the Southerners of senators 
and representatives for the national councils who had not been 
connected with the "rebellion"? The reply, that nearly 
every man of ability or character had been in some way identi- 
fied with the Confederacy and that their disqualification would 
deprive the South of the services of its natural leaders, did 



CONGRESSIONAL RECONSTRUCTION 375 

not seem to the North really valid. Stephens, Brown, and 
their ilk again in Washington ! This was surely defiance. 

Moreover, with some astonishment, many Northern men 
learned that the South would now be proportionately stronger 
in the House of Representatives than ever before. The adop- 
tion of the Thirteenth Amendment had changed the basis of 
representation from the whites plus three-fifths of the negroes 
to the whites plus all the negroes. The South was entitled to 
more votes in Congress, and these would certainly be thro\\Ti 
against the Republicans and in favor of the Northern Demo- 
crats, who had already so large a minority that the addition 
of the increased Southern vote might give them a majority. 
Already the vivid fears of the Republicans saw the men who 
had won the War ousted from office; the men who had op- 
posed the War, North and South, in control of the national 
government ; the War debt of the North repudiated and that 
of the Confederacy paid ; the negro enslaved once more ; the 
results of the War entirely lost. Why should the War have 
ever been fought if the men who had won it were thus supinely 
to allow its results to be evaded? Before the white South 
should be allowed to elect representatives to Congress for the 
negroes, the suffrage must be extended at the South to in- 
clude the negroes, who would of course vote for Republican 
representatives. 

In addition, came the news that the uneasiness and fear of 
the Southern whites at the presence of such large numbers 
of negroes, insufficiently restrained from the commission of 
crime by the scattered Federal troopers, had resulted in the 
formation of State militia by the new Southern governments, 
in whose ranks were naturally to be found a large proportion 
of Confederate veterans. Was this not clearest evidence of 
all, insisted the e:s;cited Northerners, of an intention to reim- 
pose slavery by force and to protect the South from the 
natural ire of the North at this evasion of the War legisla- 
tion? Lee's army enrolled again under the guise of State 
militia ! The Confederate Vice-President again in Congress ! 
The negroes serving out by forced labor sentences for crimes 



376 THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 

which their very existence compelled them to commit ! "To 
my mind," declared Sumner of Massachusetts, "it abandons 
the freedmen to the control of their ancient masters and leaves 
the national debt exposed to repudiation by returning rebels." 
""We tell the white men of Mississippi," vociferated the 
Chicago Tribune, * ' that the men of the North will convert the 
state of Mississippi into a frog-pond before they will allow 
any such laws to disgrace one foot of soil over which the flag 
of freedom flies." At Washington, the sentiment was general 
that the political reorganization of the old States ought to be 
postponed until the continued ascendency of the Republican 
Party could be assured. For such purposes and in such a 
spirit was Congressional Reconstruction undertaken. 

The first measures passed were intended to increase the 
power of the Freedman's Bureau to protect the negro and 
ensure him equality of civil rights. Johnson vetoed the acts 
and, on the failure of Congress to repass one of them over his 
veto, exulted openly over his victory, declaring that the leaders 
in Congress were striving as hard to undermine the principles 
of the Constitution as had the Confederates. The Northern 
Democrats and the whites at the South promptly and not un- 
reasonably concluded that the President and the administra- 
tion at Washington were on their side and consequently were 
encouraged to go further than they otherwise would have. At 
the same time. Congress discovered an ally in Stanton, the 
Secretary of War. He was of course ex officio in control of 
the army in the South and of the Freedman's Bureau, of the 
only administrative arms of the Federal government which 
could effectively enforce either executive or legislative de- 
cisions. With his assistance, the Congressional leaders hoped 
to nullify the President's orders and secure the adequate en- 
forcement of their own. 

The denunciation of the Congressional policy as unconsti- 
tutional set the leaders at once to work in the spring of 1866 
upon the Fourteenth Amendment which was to settle firmly 
and decisively the results of the War. It was to secure to 
the negro full equality in civil rights and before the courts; 



CONGRESSIONAL RECONSTRUCTION 377 

to define the term ' ' citizen of the United States ' ' and include 
the negro ; to guarantee the payment of the Federal debt and 
repudiate the Confederate debt; to repudiate forever all 
claims to indemnification for loss by reason of the emancipa- 
tion of the slaves ; and to disqualify all Confederates for elec- 
tion to Federal office. Above all, it was intended to prevent 
the Southern States, when reorganized, from taking advan- 
tage of the increase in representation, to which the Thirteenth 
Amendment entitled them, without enfranchising the negro. 
The "Federal ratio," the chief compromise of 1787, had 
permitted the South to count in computing its population, on 
which direct taxes and representation were to be apportioned, 
three-fifths of the negroes. The whites at the South had al- 
ways, therefore, voted for a part of the negroes as well as 
for themselves. The new amendment provided, as finally 
passed, that the population of each state for representation 
should be decreased in proportion to the number of male in- 
habitants, "being twenty-one years of age and citizens of the 
United States," who were denied the suffrage. Practically, 
this deprived the Southern States of the partial representa- 
tion of the negroes they had had and gave them representa- 
tion only for those male inhabitants over twenty-one who were 
actually allowed to vote. The language of the amendment ap- 
plied it to all the States of the Union, but conditions in the 
North made it of no consequence there. In the States where 
the negroes equaled or outnumbered the whites, the effect of 
the amendment was materially to decrease the old representa- 
tion of the State in the House of Eepresentatives and thus 
to ensure the control of that body by the Republicans, for any 
increase could be obtained only by the enfranchisement of the 
negroes, who could be depended upon to vote for the Republic- 
ans. "Loyalty must govern what loyalty preserved" became 
the new slogan.- 

2 The phrase was coined by Colfax, Speaker of the House of Repre- 
sentatives during the War. "If it be said that the colored people are 
unfit, then do I say that they are more fit than their recent masters 
or even than many among the poor whites. They have been loyal 



378 THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 

In the Congressional Campaign of 1866, with this confused 
jumble of issues, the Republicans certainly swept the coun- 
try; Johnson was clearly unpopular at the North; and, when 
by spring all the Southern States had rejected the Fourteenth 
Amendment by overwhelming majorities, Congress felt itself 
thoroughly justified in proceeding with the plan elaborated 
by the Joint Committee on Reconstruction during the year 
1866. 

In February 1867, the new measure was passed and with- 
out doubt was brutal, tyrannical, foolish, inexpedient, un- 
just, and probably unconstitutional. Admitting that there 
was much justification for hesitation in accepting at once presi- 
dential reconstruction, and that the Southern acts were not 
unnaturally misinterpreted by the North, it is still impossible 
to defend the method by which Congress proposed to re- 
construct the South on any other basis than a determination 
to ensure the preponderance of the Republican Party under 
all conditions for at least a generation, and to humble the 
executive and render Congress supreme in the Federal gov- 
ernment at all costs. Congress had found fault with presi- 
dential reconstruction because it failed to recognize the fact 
that the Southern States had actually been out of the Union 
for four years, and it now proceeded to declare that those 
States were to be punished for seceding, though the War it- 
self had been fought expressly to prove that no State could by 
any legal act constitutionally secede. It declared them liable 
to a penalty for doing something which the War had proved 
they had not done. The preamble spoke of the ' ' rebel States, ' ' 
though they were patently no longer in rebellion and the con- 
tention of Congress was that they were no longer States at 
all. It declared the absence of civil government and the ex- 
istence of conditions to be controlled only by the military to 
be the reasons for the bill, when it was notorious that a reason- 
ably efficient civil government had successfully preserved the 

always, and who are you, that under any pretence, exalt the prejudices 
of the disloyal above the riji^hts of the loyal?" Charles Sumner, Eulogy 
on Lincoln, 57. Boston, 1865. 



CONGRESSIONAL RECONSTRUCTION 379 

peace and administered the statutes of the United States in all 
the Southern States since the summer of 1865. To supply this 
lack of civil government until conditions should make it pos- 
sible to restore it, the act created five military districts, to be 
governed by martial law enforced by the Federal troops. Any 
semblance of civil government which might be in existence 
was to be utilized or not by the general in command of the 
district at his discretion. These districts should continue un- 
til the State should enfranchise all males over twenty-one years 
old without regard for race, color, or previous condition of 
servitude; until a convention should be elected by the males 
not disfranchised for participation in rebellion or for crime, 
which should frame a constitution in conformity with the 
laws of the United States; and until a majority of the elec- 
torate, voting at the election, had accepted the constitution 
and the Fourteenth Amendment. When the constitution had 
been accepted by Congress and the Fourteenth Amendment by 
three-fourths of the other States, the State should be readmit- 
ted to the Union. 

To this measure, were joined others intended to prevent the 
President from removing executive or army officers loyal to 
Congress without the consent of the Senate ; to force Johnson 
as commander-in-chief of the army to issue all orders to the 
generals in command of the military districts in the South 
only through the general of the army, whom Congress be- 
lieved loyal to it, and who was not to be removed without con- 
sent of the Senate. Congress then passed a bill calling a new 
session of Congress for March 4, when the long recess would 
normally have left the President supreme, and thus perpetu- 
ated itself in office. All of these measures Johnson vetoed 
with masterly arguments, and all were derisively passed by 
huge majorities over his head. 

To save the South some of the humiliation and suffering 
which these acts involved, Johnson interpreted them in the 
most favorable sense. Congress, to insult the President, 
promptly made an explicit interpretation to the opposite ef- 
fect and rendered the legislation even more stringent. At- 



380 THE EISE OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 

tempts to examine the constitutionality of the acts, to secure 
an injunction to prevent their enforcement were frustrated by 
the decision of the Supreme Court that it had no jurisdiction, 
and when a case was found which the Court could consider, 
Congress in a panic repealed the act in question and quashed 
the suit. There seemed literally to be no method of restrain- 
ing the unlimited authority claimed by Congress; the Presi- 
dent 's veto was no check ; the Supreme Court could not prop- 
erly interfere with instances of executive or legislative dis- 
cretion and could under any circumstances consider only con- 
tentious cases brought to its bar by private citizens. 

But the injustice and bad faith of Congress even more than 
the inconsistency and unconstitutionality of the scheme roused 
bitter opposition both North and South. During the sum- 
mer and fall of 1867, the elections were held and the "Black 
and Tan" Conventions chosen, chiefly of Northern ** carpet- 
baggers, ' ' poor whites, and negroes, ' ' No such hideous bodies 
of men had ever been assembled before upon the soil of 
the United States" to assist in constitution-making. In 
Alabama, the General in charge ordered the election of State 
officers to be held at the same time as the vote on the adop- 
tion of the Constitution; for this Johnson recalled him. 
Moreover, a majority of the citizens stayed away from the 
polls in order to defeat the Constitution, because the Re- 
construction Act required an affirmative vote by a majority 
of the electorate, voting at the election. Congress now 
capped the climax of injustice and shameful dealing by voting 
that the holding of elections at the same time as the vote 
for ratification of the Constitution was valid, and that the 
approval of the Constitution by a majority of those voting 
would be sufficient to secure its adoption. This legislation 
was applied ex post facto to the Alabama election. The 
crisis between the President and Congress resulted in the 
winter of 1867 and 1868 in the attempt to impeach Johnson, 
a scandal which was a fit companion to the drama being en- 
acted at the South. In the summer of 1868, with the presi- 
dential election approaching, with the Northern Democrats 



CONGRESSIONAL RECONSTRUCTION 381 

rapidly growing in strength on account of the open disap- 
proval of Congressional Reconstruction, the Republicans saw 
that, even wdth Grant as a candidate, they would almost cer- 
tainly lose the election unless they could secure the votes of 
the Southern States. With undue haste and unseemly in- 
consistency, seven States w^ere reinstated in time to vote and 
the Fourteenth Amendment w^as declared a part of the Consti- 
tution. This reinforcement, coupled with Grant's candidacy, 
the promise of bountiful pensions and the payment of the debt 
in sound currency, enabled the party to weather the storm 
of Northern disapproval. The acme of inconsistency was 
reached, however, when the Republican platform announced 
that negro suffrage was not to be required of the Northern 
States — a stand too obviously unjust to be maintained and 
in the following session the Fifteenth Amendment was passed. 
It did not actually confer suffrage upon the negro but pre- 
vented his exclusion on the ground of his race, color, or previ- 
ous condition of servitude, and in particular, it prevented the 
amendment of the new Southern constitutions and thus guar- 
anteed the continued existence of the Republican Party in the 
South. By 1870, all the Southern States had complied with 
all the exactions of Congress and had been readmitted, but 
the Reconstruction which should have been the birth time of 
the new nation had very nearly resulted in its disruption. 



XXVIII 

THE SOLID SOUTH 

The results of Congressional Reconstruction were only too 
soon apparent in the growing hostility of the South to such 
measures. Fortunately for the new national consciousness — 
that greatest of the results of the "War, the resentment of the 
Southern whites was not visited upon the North as a whole 
but rather upon the men then in control at Washington and 
upon their more selfish and individual aims. For the most 
part, however, the broad humanitarian aspect of the move- 
ments after the War, which made so much impression upon the 
North, was totally lost upon the South. The latter saw in 
the Congressional measures the work of a cabal striving at 
whatever cost to both South and North to ensure the ascend- 
ency of the Republican Party over the Democratic opposition 
throughout the country, and to increase by fair means or foul 
the relative authority and prestige of the legislature as com- 
pared with the executive. The tools of the Congressional 
leaders were the reconstructed governments, without whose 
votes they could not continue in control of the Federal govern- 
ment, and of which they could retain control only by such des- 
perate expedients as negro suffrage and unfair interference 
with the attempts of the whites at the South to free them- 
selves from the bondage of negro ascendency. Indeed, the 
Southerners felt sure that the negro governments would have 
lasted but a short time (and Congress thoroughly agreed with 
them) but for the support furnished by the army and the 
Freedman's Bureau acting under the radical measures di- 
rected or sanctioned by the Enforcement Acts. The purpose, 
the method, the result, all were to the Southerners vile be- 
yond the power of language to describe. 

382 



THE SOLID SOUTH 383 

That the military and negro governments meant the post- 
ponement for as long as they might last the construction of a 
new legal, social, and economic fabric for a new South was to 
the leaders the most burning WTong they could have suffered. 
The losses of the War had been hard to bear, but these losses, 
so unnecessary and so much more taxing to the shattered re- 
sources of the South, seemed almost beyond human endurance. 
The new South must be built upon truth, not upon falsehood. 
The exaltation of the negro, "loyalty under a black skin," as 
more trustworthy and as capable and virtuous as the white 
man, was to them a flat contradiction of existing faets.'^ Upon 
such a foundation nothing could be built. Its falsity and 
iniquity w'ere demonstrated by the almost inconceivable bad- 
ness of the work of the reconstructed governments. ''The 
lion had had his turn," wrote Francis Parkman,- "and now 
the fox, the jackal, and the w^olf took theirs." 

South Carolina, which furnishes us with probably the worst 
case of negro domination, is also the best case to study be- 
cause the negroes were largely in the majority, and because 
the army, the Freedman's Bureau, and the Enforcement Acts 
effectively prevented any interference with their rule. The 
majority of the legislature and of the most important officers 
were negroes and the rest were rascally whites from the North 
or even more unsavory characters from the South. A "Band 
of Forty Thieves" unblushingly sold themselves to the high- 
est bidder. The barbarous luxury and extravagance at the 
Capitol were unexampled — $1600 was paid for two hun- 
dred imported china spittoons, $750 apiece for French mirrors 
for the Speaker 's Room, while a bar and restaurant dispensed 
free food and drink to members and their friends. Hundreds 
of pardons were openly sold to criminals by the Governors. 
Nearly $600,000 w^as spent on worn out rice-fields and sand 
hills, for the relief of negroes. The land was not worth 
$100,000 ; not a hundred negroes were ever settled on it ; the 
Committee drew $100,000 more than its appropriation and 

1 Supra, p. 370-2. 

2 Farnhani, Life of Parkman, 275. 



384 THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 

never accounted at all for the expenditure of more than a 
quarter of a million dollars. So much for black philanthropy ! 
In 1860, the taxable property in South Carolina had been 
$316,000,000, which had shrunk in 1871 to $184,000,000 ; the 
taxes had risen, however, from $392,000 to $2,000,000. The 
valuation had decreased 40% ; the taxes had risen 500% ; and 
the State debt increased 400%. The taxes were levied by 
the negroes, of whom scarcely 20% had any property at all 
and of whom 80% were totally illiterate, and were paid by 
the whites the vast majority of whom were disfranchised for 
participation in the War. 

To the Southerners, the worst part was the forcible main- 
tenance of such a regime by tlie Federal troops, by the Freed- 
man's Bureau, by negro militia, for the most selfish of polit- 
ical purposes, as they conceived it, the continued supremacy 
of the Republican Party. If slavery had been anti-democratic 
and was for that reason alien to the spirit of American insti- 
tutions, what name should be applied to the maintenance of 
the Republican Party in power by means of ignorance and in- 
capacity supported by fraud and violence in defiance of the 
expressed will of the Democrats, North and South? D. H. 
Chamberlain, the white Governor of South Carolina who res- 
cued that State, many times met the Congressional leaders in 
Washington. No less Northern a periodical than the Atlantic 
Monthly ^ published his gently worded but crushing arraign- 
ment of Stevens and his colleagues. "Not one of these leaders 
had seen the South or studied it first hand. Not one of them 
professed or eared to know more. They had made up their 
minds once for all and they wished only to push on with 
their predetermined policy. . . . The personal knowledge of 
the writer warrants him in stating that eyes were never blinder 
to facts, minds never more ruthlessly set upon a policy, than 
were Stevens and Morton on putting the white South under 
the heel of the black South." It was told of Stevens, and 
believed to be a characteristic story, that, when informed both 
applicants for a certain office in the South were thorough ras- 

3 Vol. LXXXVII, p. 474. 



THE SOLID SOUTH 385 

cals, he vociferated, "What do I care for that? Tell me 
which is our rascal." On the whole, the men who had really 
been the backbone of the North during the "War did not ap- 
prove of the Congressional policy of Reconstruction. There 
seems to be little reason to doubt that after 1867 the popular 
majority at the North was Democratic and thoroughly hostile 
to Reconstruction. Indeed, this very fact must be appreciated 
to understand why certain features of the Congressional policy 
were devised and adopted at all. ' 

The South was saved by the moderation and real devotion 
of the Southern whites aided by the Northern Democrats, 
The methods used were empirical and were discovered almost 
by accident. To deal with the arrogant negroes and protect 
the lives and honor of the whites, which the Southern men were 
afraid to entrust solely to the scattered Federal troops, secret 
organizations were devised and had their greatest currency 
and success between 1868 and 1872. Unable to organize pub- 
licly because of the attitude of the authorities at Washington, 
"it was therefore necessary in order to protect our families 
from outrage and preserve our own lives to have something 
that we could regard as a brotherhood, — a combination of the 
best men in the country to act purely in self-defense, to repel 
attack in case we should be attacked by these people. That 
was the whole object of this organization," testified General 
Gordon in later years. 

In 1870, the Freedman's Bureau was abolished, the corps of 
the army soon after entirely withdrawn, and the artificial sup- 
port of the carpet-baggers and negroes disappeared. Grad- 
ually, too, the whites who had been disqualified for participa- 
tion in the War were qualifying as voters, and, as the negroes 
were in the numerical majority in only three States, it was 
clear that the whites would control the other States as soon as 
they could be reinstated. It was seen, however, that the white 
vote must be cast for the Democratic party and its candidates. 
Hence arose the Solid South, a white South based upon the 
exclusion of the negro from political power. To secure the 
election of the first white candidates, and to anticipate as 



386 THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 

much as possible the day when the restoration of the vote to 
the whole white electorate should entirely place the power 
in their hands, it was seen that the intimidation of negroes to 
prevent them from voting would be useful, if not actually es- 
sential. The superstitious terror of the negroes for the Ku 
Klux Klan and similar societies suggested their use to keep 
enough of them from the polls to allow the whites to succeed 
in choosing their candidates. Much exaggeration and vilifica- 
tion of the influence and purpose of these mysterious orders 
has been common and probably many rascals took advantage 
of the familiar disguises to perpetrate crimes which were 
wrongly ascribed to the orders. In South Carolina, where the 
negroes formed a majority of the population, salvation came 
through the splendid honesty and ability of a white man, 
elected by the negroes themselves, who turned upon them and, 
after a hard fight, led the whites to victory. 

The greatest problem lay in the maintenance of the whites 
in the ascendency, and, in the States where the negroes formed 
the majority, this could be permanently assured only by the 
disfranchisement of enough negroes to leave the whites in the 
majority. It was soon clear that the Fifteenth Amendment 
was not mandatory: it did not provide that negroes should 
vote, but that they should not be excluded from the electorate 
by a constitutional or statutory provision which in express 
words or by necessary implication excluded them solely on 
the ground of race, color, or previous condition of servitude. 
Any limitation of the suffrage by educational or property 
qualifications, applicable to all classes and races, would ef- 
fectually and constitutionally exclude the negroes from the 
electorate. It was also apparent that the national govern- 
ment was not empowered to investigate the manner in which 
each State's officials exercised such discretionary authority as 
might be conferred upon them in applying such statutes to 
individual cases. If the officials declared the white man liter- 
ate and the black man illiterate in defiance of the facts, there 
would not be any remedy. The official's right to decide 
could not be taken from him nor his use of it investigated 



THE SOLID SOUTH 387 

by Federal authority. If the white man was invariably asked 
to prove his ability to read by "reading" a short phrase which 
could be easily learned beforehand, and the negro was re- 
quired to show genuine intelligence, it would be a simple mat- 
ter to qualify even the ignorant whites and exclude all but the 
educated blacks, for the vast majority of the negroes were ut- 
terly illiterate. By such measures, enforced by such a use of 
the discretionary authority of the executive, all the Southern 
States soon reduced the negro electorate to a safe minority. 

Meanwhile, it had become apparent that the severe pressure 
of circumstances would not permanently prevent vital differ- 
ences of opinion among the whites on other questions of policy 
than white supremacy, and that soon some method of debat- 
ing other issues among the whites would be imperative to 
avoid any possible split in their ranks and any consequent loss 
of the election to the Black Republicans. Then they resorted 
to the machinery of the Democratic Party. The qualifications 
for membership were not affected by the Fifteenth Amend- 
ment because the Party was not legally in existence. Within 
its organization the whites might disagree, debate, and finally 
reach some decision as to candidates and policies, which they 
could then make effective at the legal election by a solid vote. 
The negroes have been excluded from the Democratic Party; 
they still are a minority of the legal electorate in all the 
Southern States; and they have thus been effectually robbed 
of all the real exercise of political power which the humani- 
tarians and politicians sought to give them, but which they 
were not as a race qualified to use. 

By 1870, all the Southern States had in one way or another 
been restored to their places in the Union ; by 1877 the whites 
had recovered control of the State government in all and the 
period usually known as the Reconstruction was over. In 
reality, the struggles of the twelve years following the War 
had merely enabled the Southern whites to remove the worst 
obstacles sown in the way of the construction of a really new 
South by the pernicious activity of Congress. The building 
of the New South did not begin anywhere much before 1870 



388 THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 

and in some States not till 1877. Nor has the North in any- 
proper sense been responsible for the making of the new 
South : the Southerners themselves have solved their own prob- 
lems with the assistance of mighty factors whose operation no 
one foresaw. 

The Southerners have aided economic forces in solving the 
economic problems which conditions both before and after the 
War had created. The insistent cry for more land had been 
chiefly due to the fact that only the most fertile soil yielded 
large returns to the crude labor of the slaves and that its 
virgin productiveness was so soon exhausted that the planters 
must be constantly clearing new land. Moreover, only land 
along the rivers was wanted because the river furnished an 
easy, cheap method of transportation, while the cultivation of 
the land a few miles away, and in particular of the uplands, 
required transportation of the crops, the expense of which 
greatly reduced the amount of profit and prevented competi- 
tion with the river-bottoms. Nor was the quality of the cotton 
grown outside of the river-bottoms as good. The upland soil 
lacked certain necessary chemical constituents and the product 
was less in amount and difficult to prepare for market. 
Modern scientific agriculture and modern machinery plus the 
railroad have completely obviated these fundamental diffi- 
culties. It is now possible cheaply to fertilize the fields and 
crop them year after year; it is possible to till fields never 
before profitable and to cleanse cheaply by machinery cotton 
which before the War could not have been used at all. The 
network of railroad trunk lines, growing constantly through- 
out the South, has put thousands of acres into close contact 
with the market which were before the War hopelessly isolated. 
With the introduction of better tools and better methods, of 
fertilizers and intensive agriculture, a larger crop has been 
constantly grown with fewer hands. 

On the whole, too, even '* unreconstructed " Southerners are 
compelled to admit that the free negro is a more intelligent 
and industrious worker than the old slave, that there is to-day 
less labor wasted than there used to be. The experience of 



THE SOLID SOUTH 389 

the South since the War has conclusively disproved the Jere- 
miads of 1858 that cotton could not be grown without slaves 
and that emancipation would destroy the industry. Indeed, 
far from interfering with its development, free labor, aided 
by a great number of other powerful factors, has produced 
cotton at an even faster rate than before. The old assump- 
tions of profitable cultivation — fertile land and cheap labor — 
have been proved true, but experience has shown that virgin 
soil is not necessarily the most fertile cotton land nor ignorant 
slave-labor necessarily the cheapest. 

At the same time, the negro has not shown himself as capa- 
ble, industrious, and energetic as the eager humanitarians as- 
sumed he would be once his shackles had been struck off. 
Men are not changed by legislative fiat nor by the good in- 
tentions of other people. Whether the result of inherent 
racial deficiencies or of the environment provided by slavery, 
the negro as a race has not been capable of self-development, 
and the more intelligent negroes themselves now realize that 
their fathers were economic as much as legal slaves, and that 
emancipation did not strike off the economic shackles welded 
by the negroes' own ignorance, laziness, and lack of personal 
ambition and moral strength. Educational and religious or- 
ganizations have accomplished much and will undoubtedly ac- 
complish proportionately more each decade, but the solution 
of the negroes' difficulties has been found in the exercise by 
most employers of a sort of patriarchal authority. Nothing 
else has saved the more superstitious and more ignorant from 
the clutches of the loan shark, from constant imprisonment 
for petty offenses, and from chronic beggary and w-ant. It 
has been necessary to pay the negro in food and clothes be- 
cause he nearly invariably gambled away the money or bought 
with it valueless and useless trinkets at extortionate prices. 
Naturally, this situation has permitted the unscrupulous em- 
ployer to exact "contract labor," to create permanent debts 
at his "truck" store, and terrorize the unfortunate negroes 
with impossible penalties for trivial crimes. In an infinitely 
greater number of cases, it has compelled the white employer 



390 THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 

to advance supplies to the negro and his family far in excess 
of the value of the labor performed and constantly to care 
for them through sickness and hard times. It should be more 
generally and more generously admitted that the vast ma- 
jority of Southerners have conscientiously and nobly acquitted 
themselves of their responsibility toward the negro. At the 
same time, despite the assistance of the better class of em- 
ployers, between the loan shark, the unscrupulous poor whites 
often chosen to judgeships and legal offices, thieving agents, 
and unjust employers, the negroes as a class have enjoyed any- 
thing but ideal economic freedom since 1865 and have in 
many cases been less contented and less well cared for than 
the slaves were on the more humane plantations before the 
War. The negro is indeed his own greatest problem. 

Yet, while the Southern sentiment is still strong against any 
recognition of social equality, the best opinion is now insistent 
upon the strict enforcement of laws which will ensure even the 
most ignorant and credulous negroes from exploitation at the 
hands of the unscrupulous of all sorts, varieties, and shades, 
and give them actual civil and economic equality with white 
men of the same capacity. The most serious aspect of the 
negi'O problem was and still is the existence of these millions 
of an alien race compelled by circumstances to live in the 
midst of the white South. Slavery was no remedy because it 
meant the perpetuation of the evil. Emancipation was the 
only possible permanent remedy because it alone could pro- 
vide the negro wdth the possibilities of unlimited development 
and change. The only permanent solution will of course 
be the gradual transformation of the ignorant, shiftless, and 
superstitious cotton-hand into such intelligent, industrious, 
capable, colored men, really as well as nominally the equal of 
the white man in all civil and political pursuits, as have de- 
veloped in some number since the war. The latter are yet 
only a bare handful and in the nature of things, as normal 
processes of evolution are slow, will become the majority only 
in course of generations. Emancipation spelled opportunity, 
not fulfilment. 



THE SOLID SOUTH 391 

Again, while emancipation and the "War provided oppor- 
tunities, removed artificial obstacles, they did not and could 
not create the economic forces which have caused so remark- 
able a transformation of the poor white as the years since 
Reconstruction have seen. Natural forces have been freeing 
him from his economic slavery by the creation and wide de- 
velopment of diversified industry and of improved agriculture. 
Cheap steel has meant more railroads, better and cheaper 
transportation facilities, cheaper machinery, and the possi- 
bility of transporting it cheaply, cheap coal and the certainty 
of a steady supply for factories operated by steam in loca- 
tions where the lack of water-power and of raw materials had 
hitherto prevented their development. The factory, spinning 
and weaving cotton in the South at the source of the supply of 
cotton and labor, has successfully competed wdth older 
Northern and European firms, better organized and with more 
skilful but higher paid labor. The new agriculture, the use 
of fertilizers, of selected seed have made again fertile lands 
long considered to have been worn out. Access to the rail- 
roads has made it possible to market the crop to advantage, 
and, though cotton is still the great source of income in most 
Southern States and still prevents the adequate development 
of agricultural and mineral resources in general, the change 
for the better is very marked. In this as in every other direc- 
tion the factors solving the Southern problem have been eco- 
nomic and social, not political and legal, — the application of 
science to the fundamental geological difficulties which made 
the South in 1850 what it was. 

Best of all, the railroads, the telegraph, the press, schools 
and education are welding the Southern people to each other 
and to the nation at large. The country is truly interdepend- 
ent for the first time and is realizing more and more that its 
future is interlocked with that of the nation at large. While 
the wounds of the War, augmented by the trials of Recon- 
struction, are not yet entirely healed, there are now few, if 
any, who do not feel themselves Americans and not South- 
erners. 



XXIX 

NATIONAL PROBLEMS 

The truly fundamental and difficult problems, which had for 
so many generations caused concern and anxiety to American 
statesmen and merchants, were finally solved in the decades 
succeeding the Civil War, but neither the War itself nor any 
of the political or constitutional developments resultant from 
it or subsequent to it had more than a subsidiary influence in 
consummating the settlement. As the problems were them- 
selves economic, the result of the character of the new country, 
of its people, and of its natural backwardness in develop- 
ment, so the solution was itself the work of economic forces, 
which solved the problems by literally obviating the economic 
difficulties out of which they arose. 

The dependence of America upon Europe had colored the 
whole of Colonial history and had largely shaped political 
and constitutional events before 1860. Free trade with the 
West Indies had been the fundamental condition of Colonial 
economic development and to secure it political and consti- 
tutional relationships had been created or rejected. The dis- 
obedience to the Navigation Acts, the outbreak of the Revolu- 
tion, the War of 1812, the protective tariff, the "American 
System," and much more had been the direct result of Ameri- 
can economic dependence on Europe. With the development 
of the cotton-culture, a medium of direct exchange with 
Europe appeared, and with the concomitant growth of di- 
versified industry in the North and the use of machinery and 
fertilizers by the West in agriculture, the dependence on 
European manufactured goods and the lack of a home market 
for American produce were no longer so pronounced. Be- 
fore 1860 a beginning had been made, but the economic de- 

392 



NATIONAL PROBLEMS 393 

velopment of the country since the War finally and decisively 
freed us from the old economic shackles hitherto binding us 
to Europe. America and Europe are now fairly interdepend- 
ent. Our "infant industries" have disappeared; the old 
tariff problem has disappeared with the cessation of the 
economic dependence whose disastrous effects it was intended 
to mitigate. The growth of the country, — and not the Revo- 
lution, the Ci\'il War, or the tariff, — has made us economi- 
cally independent of the rest of the world. 

The second greatest problem in American development, 
the lack of a medium of exchange between sections of the 
country, has been similarly solved by the growth of the 
United States. The disappearance of the problem has ended 
the internal quarrels in America which were such striking fac- 
tors in 1776, in 1812, and in 1861. One fundamental cause 
of the difficulty had been the lack of a domestic supply of 
specie from which or on which a sound currency could be 
based, for the dependence of the country on Europe prevented 
us from retaining here enough of the world's supply of the 
precious metals to serve our purpose. Another basic diffi- 
culty had lain in the existence of highly developed com- 
munities along the coast and of primitive districts in the in- 
terior, the latter being necessarily and inevitably in debt to 
the former. Thus had grown up debtor and creditor classes 
in all parts of Colonial America, and debtor and creditor 
sections in post-revolutionary America, which, as the belt 
of settlement extended westward, ceased to be a source of 
discord within each State and produced an alignment of 
States and then of sections of which the Western were al- 
ways the debtors of the Eastern States or sections. The favor- 
ite remedy for this difficulty of domestic exchange through- 
out American history has been plenty of money, or cheap 
money, and it has appeared in various guises from the land 
banks and paper money crazes of Colonial times to the repu- 
diation of debts during the Critical Period and the Green- 
back and FVee Silver agitations in 1876 and 1896. Always 
the problem has been the same: a fundamental difficulty in 



394 THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 

maintaining the equilibrium of exchange between the vari- 
ous parts of the country and consequently a very serious 
pressure on individuals in the debtor sections the moment 
an economic crisis like the Panics of 1837, 1873, or 1892 
existed. It has always been necessary for coin or currency 
to "flow" from the East to the West and South "to move 
the crops," and, when during a panic the demand for West- 
ern and Southern products decreases, the scarcity of demand 
manifests itself usually to the farmer and planter as a 
scarcity of currency. Hence the widespread belief in the 
debtor districts in 1873 that enough greenbacks would remedy 
their particular troubles, and in 1896, that silver coined at a 
ratio of 16 to 1 would relieve the distress. 

The difficulty is now almost, if not entirely, obviated. In 
the first place, the discovery of gold in California in 1849, 
of silver in Nevada shortly after, and of gold in Alaska, 
has provided the United States with an indigenous supply 
of specie more than adequate to meet the demands for specie 
as currency. We now dig out of the ground a commodity 
which Hamilton had to husband with the greatest care for 
fear no more would be procurable in case the little he had 
were hoarded or exported. But the more vital difficulty, the 
dependence of America upon Europe, the dependence of the 
West and South upon the East, has been itself fundamentally 
altered by the increase of wealth and population through- 
out the country and in particular by the rise in the Mississippi 
Valley of a strong diversified economic life, by the growth of 
the New South, by the development of the Pacific Coast 
States. The disappearance of the frontier, the extraordinary 
increase of population from about thirty-one millions in 
1860 to seventy-six millions in 1900 and to over one hun- 
dred millions in 1914, the rapid immigration, the distribu- 
tion of land by the government, either free or for nominal 
payments only, have effectively destroyed the peculiar "fron- 
tier" conditions which in themselves were the most difficult 
aspects of this particular problem. As the country has be- 
come more and more truly interdependent, the independ- 



NATIONAL PROBLEMS 395 

enee of each section has become more and more marked and 
its dependence less and less apparent. To-day, no section is 
altogether self-sufficing; no section is wholly dependent; all 
therefore mutually benefit from the constant interchange of 
commodities. The rate of exchange and the amount of cur- 
rency needed are after all results of the comparison of ac- 
tual values, and such difficulties as America had struggled 
with were due to fundamental differences in the degree of 
economic development in various parts of the country which 
nothing short of fundamental economic forces could remedy. 
Financial policies and measures like those of Hamilton and 
Gallatin might obviate some of the worst difficulties or partially 
mitigate the seriousness of the consequences, but only an actual 
economic equality between America and Europe and between 
different parts of the United States could really make the con- 
ditions of foreign and domestic exchange essentially similar. 
The third problem of magnitude with which American his- 
tory had been concerned was the constitutional and political 
relationship of individuals to each other, and to the local. 
State, or central government. It had appeared in various 
guises and forms: democracy, States' sovereignty, nation- 
ality, personal liberty, slavery, and in the crowding corollaries 
of each and of their interaction and interrelation. The 
operation of the economic forces making for union and 
nationality and for the abrogation of local independence and 
States' rights has in no period produced as marked results 
as in the decades subsequent to the Civil War. The disap- 
pearance of the frontier and of those conditions which had 
hitherto strongly fostered localism; the rapid attainment of 
something like contiguity of settlement throughout the coun- 
try by the natural growth of population and by immigration ; 
the increasing economic interdependence of the sections; the 
absolute dependence of the urban population upon the na- 
tionalization of trade and industry ; all are rapidly erasing the 
old State lines as boundaries marking vital differences of in- 
terests and ideas. With the cheapness of transportation by 
rail came an ease of the movement of population and a con- 



396 THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 

stant shifting of individuals from one State to another and 
from one section to another, which, coupled to immigration, is 
fast obliterating the racial, religious, and social characteristics 
hitherto regarded as typical in the older sections and States. 
The population is becoming homogeneous both in blood and in 
traditions; sectionalization and segregation are already be- 
coming improbable and even impossible. 

In this work of unifying and equalizing the population, 
schools, universities, newspapers, magazines have plaj^ed a 
conspicuous part. The evident attempt to produce books, 
papers, and literature which should be acceptable to all in- 
terests, sections, races, and creeds, and the consistent avoid- 
ance of what would be likely to appeal to a part only has had 
an influence towards nationality and uniformity which is ex- 
ceedingly clear in the present generation of children. Sec- 
tionalism, localism. States' sovereignty, traditional notions of 
class, creed, or race are disappearing with an astonishing 
rapidity and truly national ideas are taking their place. The 
growth of the country has given us a national idea of the re- 
lations of individuals to each other, of the individual to his 
own State, of the States to each other, and to the Federal 
government. Our old hatred of England has disappeared 
with the change in our economic condition. The antipathy be- 
tween East, and "West, and South is gone because of the new 
economic interdependence. The abolition of slavery has re- 
moved the only thoroughly undemocratic institution in 
America and the negro problem is slowly but surely solving it- 
self by economic and educational methods. The difficulties 
and problems are still great but they are no longer State 
or sectional; they are in the broadest and truest sense na- 
tional. 

The old problems have disappeared and the very growth 
which dissipated them has caused new problems, and this time 
national problems to be solved by the nation as a whole. 
Those were the problems of growth, these are issues of de- 
velopment; those were of childhood and youth; these are of 
manhood ; those concerned with the strengthening of the phys- 



I 



NATIONAL PROBLEMS 397 

ical body of the nation ; these with the expression of its con- 
science and the development of its corporate mentality. 

"We are confronted with a nationalization of industry in the 
growth since the Civil War of transcontinental railroads, of 
enormous trusts and combinations controlling production or 
distribution or both throughout the country of some com- 
modity as important to the welfare of the people as steel, beef, 
or oil. We must understand the attempt of every manu- 
facturer to reach a national market and so to standardize and 
make uniform his product as to meet the demand in all parts 
of the country. We have also seen the national political 
parties and national political issues completely dominate, as 
probably never before, local, municipal and State parties and 
policies. The new nationalized industry has influenced the 
new national politics and parties, and this vast wealth cen- 
tralized in a few hands, these organizations of thousands of 
men controlled by railroads and trusts, have not unnaturally 
exerted great influence in politics, resulting, as many believe, 
in corruption and wrong. With power and wealth has come 
national ambition and a desire for expansion. The United 
States has acquired the Philippines and Porto Rico, is build- 
ing the Panama Canal, and has now so expanded the Monroe 
Doctrine as to claim a right of interference (and perhaps con- 
trol) in the Central and South American States, which some 
believe to portend political domination of the Western Hemi- 
sphere. The new nation is at work as a nation, and thinking, 
feeling, aspiring as a nation. In the new reform movements, 
in the widespread protests against graft and corruption, in the 
denunciation of the white-slave trade, we hear the national 
conscience speaking. By writing, speaking, organizing, we 
are attempting to arrive at something like a national con- 
sensus of opinion as to the problems, their causes, and the 
best remedies. 

But this stupendous growth of the country in wealth and 
in population, this nationalization of industry, of politics, of 
education, of literature, of reform, has vitally changed every 
aspect of American life as Hamilton, Jefferson, and Jackson 



398 THE EISE OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 

knew it. It has altered beyond recognition every fundamental 
factor in the structure of democracy as they built it and has 
created a problem of living of which even the basic condi- 
tions are different. American democracy is not what it was 
meant to be because America is no longer what it was in the 
times of Jefferson and Jackson. 

The old theoretical assumptions, from which were derived 
a belief in the adequacy of democracy to govern and admin- 
ister efficiently the community's affairs, premised the pos- 
session by the electorate of sufficient ability to pass upon the 
qualifications of candidates and upon the expediency and 
justice of measures. Jackson indeed based manhood suffrage 
and the reign of the people upon a deep-rooted faith in the 
simplicity of governmental issues. It was to him therefore 
a truism that every man in the community possessed the polit- 
ical intelligence requisite for a just decision about measures 
or for holding offices, to formulate or execute them. On the 
whole, their observation of conditions taught the early demo- 
crats that government was no peculiarly difficult art to be per- 
formed by experts, but an obviously simple matter of which 
every man was capable as soon as he became of age. Prob- 
lems were really few and simple in 1787 and had not greatly 
changed in 1830; the average man did understand them and 
did know the candidates nominated for office in the rela- 
tively small agricultural community in which he lived. The 
conditions were those under which democracy works best, and 
from the conditions the theorists drew the premises on which 
they built the larger structure of central government. But 
they naturally did not perceive the effect which the constant 
doubling of the population generation after generation has 
had on the electorate and on administrative issues. It has be- 
come almost impossible for a well-educated public-spirited citi- 
zen to vote intelligently, as Jefferson and Jackson assumed as 
a matter of course he would, from his own loiowledge of candi- 
dates and issues. The premises of democracy are no longer 
true : government is now a difficult art and the average * * well- 
educated" man does not normally possess the information or 



NATIONAL PROBLEMS 399 

experience needed to qualify him either to participate in elec- 
tions or to hold ofiSce. 

As the country has grown in size, as States have multiplied, 
as cities have swollen in size till Greater New York now con- 
tains more people than the whole of America held in 1789, 
the problems thrust upon State and municipal governments 
have changed utterly in character from those familiar in 
1830, The every-day work of city government — sanitation, 
water, sewage, lighting — can be adequately performed only 
by the application of scientific knowledge by experts and by 
the use of administrative skill of a high order in organizing 
the work of thousands of men, whose daily cooperation in 
tasks most men performed for themselves in 1830 is now a pre- 
requisite of public health and safety. City problems have be- 
come engineering difficulties which even experts do not always 
successfully handle ; State problems require a detailed knowl- 
edge of conditions in a large community which no individual 
normally possesses at all; and national issues like the tariff 
and the triTsts are so complex and difficult that years of study 
and experience are necessary even to comprehend the problem 
itself. Though education has spread wider and wider 
throughout the community, though the standard has risen with 
each generation of school children, yet the growth of the com- 
munity has been robbing the electorate bit by bit of that 
ability to understand conditions and of that familiarity with 
candidates which were the foundations on which democratic 
government was built. The average man cannot of his own 
knowledge judge measures or select from among the candi- 
dates nominated. The mere size of the community has made 
personal information about its needs or its members impos- 
sible for the vast majority. Upon this fact have been based 
the national and State parties to judge measures and select 
candidates for the electorate. 

The old concept of democracy adequately satisfied the indi- 
vidual's craving for a share in the direction of affairs be- 
cause the notion of one man, one vote, rested in 1830 upon an 
actual substantial equality of ability, education, and wealth. 



400 THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 

Something like an aristocracy of wealth had appeared along 
the seaboard in Colonial times, had been destroyed by the 
Revolution, and an equality of fortunes created. In the 
South, slavery and the cotton-culture produced another un- 
democratic social and political oligarchy which was destroyed 
by the Civil War. During the last generation has appeared 
once more a wealthy class, whose personnel constantly changes, 
but whose existence is once more creating an oligarchy of 
property whose influence on social life in the larger cities and 
in national business and in politics is only too clearly great, 
*'Big business" is contrary to the principles of Jacksonian 
democracy. The justice of assigning each individual only one 
vote depended upon an essential identity of individual inter- 
ests, and huge aggregations of capital, a radical divergence of 
interests between labor and capital, are contrary to the old 
premises of democracy. The facts do not coincide with the 
theory; a man's legal rights clash with his economic status. 
The vast majority of the electorate are to-day non-taxpayers, 
but they control the appropriation and assessment of taxes. 
A majority of the electorate are in the ranks of labor. Shall 
the small minority which capital and the taxpayers form be 
contented with an influence in the affairs of the community 
commensurate with the count of heads? The magnate feels 
that preeminent ability and phenomenally large economic in- 
terests affected by the policy of the State entitle him to more 
consideration in politics than is accorded a man who has in 
the world at large neither influence, interest, nor position. 
Shall the numerical majority already in control of the State 
refrain from using the administrative, legislative, and judicial 
branches of the government to further its aims in the economic 
and social war with capital ? 

The danger of the situation lies in the fact that neither side 
can claim the support of the original democratic premises. 
If these assumed an essential equality of wealth, ability, and 
social position, they also founded universal suffrage on the 
assumption that the property of the numerical majority was 
greater in amount than that of the minority; and that the 



NATIONAL PROBLEMS 401 

almost universal possession of taxable property (a literal fact 
in 1830) would give practically every one a direct interest in 
avoiding extravagance and guarding against corruption. 
Both are no longer true. Not only has the usable capital of 
the community become concentrated in a few hands, theoreti- 
cally entitled by reason of their scanty numbers to no political 
consideration at all, but the control of the political organs of 
the community lies necessarily in the hands of those who as 
non-taxpayers, non-property owners, have no direct interest 
whatever in an economical, efficient utilization of the resources 
of the country. What seemed the worst of all possible even- 
tualities to the fathers of American democracy has actually 
come to pass — the control of the State is now in the hands of 
those who have no immediate financial interest in its continued 
existence or proper administration. Every man originally re- 
ceived a share in the management of affairs because he pos- 
sessed a tangible financial interest in their right conduct. 
The growi:li of the industrial fabric, of trusts and railroads, 
the growth of cities, have literally destroyed that vital premise 
of democracy. 

Hence we have seen attempts, on the whole, successful, by 
the minority chiefly interested in the good conduct of affairs, 
to exert through party machinery and subservient officials 
and legislatures more influence on the policies of the State and 
the daily conduct of affairs than the democratic tenet of 
equality entitles them to exercise. This minority has denied 
the justice and equity of permitting the numerical majority 
to decide great issues, involving the status of property and in- 
vestments, in accordance with what the majority has con- 
ceived to be its particular interest, where its interest obviously 
clashed with theirs. On the other hand, the majority have 
inveighed against the existence of large aggregations of capi- 
tal as "illegal," meaning of course undemocratic, and have 
viewed as corruption and wrongdoing the attempts of capital- 
ists to exert an influence upon the affairs of the State com- 
mensurate with the size of their interests. Here the difficulty 
lies — not in the existence of a battle between prejudice and 



402 THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 

honesty, between democracy and oligarchy, but in a clash of 
interests and a war of prejudices. Both minority and ma- 
jority are prejudiced; each is anxious to advance its interests 
to the exclusion of the other; neither is unprejudiced or dis- 
interested ; to each political power in the other 's hands seems 
a menace to its own existence. 

The fundamental difficulty lies in the fact that the economic 
power in the community no longer rests with those who 
nominally control the state; the fundamental assumption of 
democracy was that the two would naturally be in the same 
hands. Unquestionably, some satisfactory decision of this 
oldest of governmental issues is the most important question 
before the nation to-day. Because it involves of necessity all 
possible relations between man and man, it concerns not only 
the happiness of the community but its very existence. It is 
first and foremost a question of the relation of undoubted 
economic forces to the political fabric and calls for an ad- 
justment of constitutions and theories to a clash of interests 
which is as old as the Pyramids and as difficult of solution as 
the Riddle of the Sphinx. The real question to be debated 
is whether property and wealth as such have a right to any 
influence in a democratic community, whether efficiency, 
ability, and the undoubted control of the physical resources 
of the country are to count for naught in deciding the more 
immediate issues before the community. It is a question as 
broad as the conception of morality, as vital as the possession 
of individual liberty, as deep as the foundations of civil life. 

As the result of these changes and as the necessary ideas 
upon which any solution must be based, we see emerging grad- 
ually various new notions of the purpose and powers of the 
existing parts of the constitutional fabric. Where Jefferson 
looked upon government as a negative force which would be 
more useful the less it interfered with the life of the indi- 
vidual, the present tendency is to insist upon the positive, 
directive, formative influence the state may exert upon the 
lives of its citizens. We are agitating for corrective and regu- 
lative legislation on every conceivable subject from the public 



NATIONAL PROBLEMS 403 

health and the public morals to the hours of labor and the 
minimum wage. The assistance of the community is to be 
invoked to settle all the perplexed issues between individuals 
or between groups of individuals. Gradually, too, we find the 
authority of the central government gaining in the public esti- 
mation and believed to possess more adequate powers and to 
be better able than State or city to deal efficiently and 
promptly with most problems. The great increase of govern- 
mental authority, which the era of regulation demands, will 
apparently accrue almost entirely to the Federal government, 
to the exclusion of State and local governments. And it will, 
furthermore, break another precedent of democracy and ac- 
crue to the executive rather than to the legislature. Com- 
mission government, expert advice, autocratic power in the 
hands of the mayor have already robbed the municipal legis- 
latures of prominence and now the State legislature and Con- 
gress seem likely to lose both power and prestige in their 
turn. 

In still another point, the new democracy is the antithesis 
of the old. Jefferson and Jackson built their society on the 
individual, for whose welfare the state itself existed, and who 
had perfect freedom to follow his own desires or advantage, 
so far as the law did not explicitly restrain him nor some other 
individual sue him successfully in the courts. The welfare of 
the majority of individuals was the highest aim of state- 
craft ; the policy of the state should be based on the views and 
interests of the majority which cared to vote at the polls ; the 
minority had no rights as against the majority, nor the com- 
munity as a whole against the individual. This excessive in- 
dividualism, which in an agricultural community was afforded 
few chances for harm, found in the new economic developments 
astounding opportunities for self-aggrandizement at the ex- 
pense of other individuals and of the state at large. To rob the 
nation of lands and mineral rights, to rob posterity of its for- 
ests and water privileges, to burden posterity with huge debts, 
to destroy competition with the aid of the tariff, all was easily 
sanctioned by the notion that the community had no rights as 



404 THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 

against individuals because its rights were merely the sum of 
theirs. We have come to see that the truly national ideal, the 
truly democratic ideal, is the good of the whole people and 
that only by the fullest protection of the rights of the minority 
and of that greater entity, the State itself, can a great and free 
people attain in the highest degree, "Liberty and Union, now 
and forever, one and inseparable." 



THE END 



INDEX 



INDEX 



Adams, Jolfn, 56. 97, 98, 113, 114, 
117, 120, 126, 141, 180, 194. 

Adams, Samuel, 96-99, 101, 179. 

Anti-Slavery, rise of, 245-6; com- 
pared with pro-slavery argu- 
ment, 246-8; relation to the 
outbreak of war in 1861, 246; 
escaping slaves aided by advo- 
cates of, 264-5. 

Armada, significance in American 
History of defeat of, 18-19. 

Balboa, 12. 

Boston, settlement of, 25; in co- 
lonial times, 50-54, 56, 62-7; 
in the Revolution, 93, 94, 96- 
106. 

Brown, John, in Kansas, 273; raid 
of, 280-1. 

Bunker Hill, battle of, 94, 97, 98, 
104-106, 137. 

Calhoun, John C, in the War of 
1812, 206; views upon conflict- 
ing interests of sections, 215; 
Exposition of, 221-2; democratic 
ideas of, 234; against Compro- 
mise in 1850, 267; counsels war 
with the North, 266, 289 and 
note, 295 ; death of, 268. 

Canada, French colonies in, 74-6 ; 
results of conquest of by the 
English, 78-9; attempts to an- 
nex to United States, 199 and 
note, 206 ; boundary settled with 
United States, 262. 

Capitalists, part played by in col- 
onization, 20; origin of in 
colonial America, 43-4; at- 
tacked during Revolution, 95-6, 
111-116; difficulties of during 



Critical Period, 140-5, 152-7; 
support strong central govern- 
ment, 1787-90, 160, 184-5, 196- 
7; support protective tariff, 
215-219, 221; alone profit from 
slavery at South, 241-5; 
strength of at the North due to 
manufactures, 249-250 ; effects 
of Civil War upon, 350-9 ; effects 
of nationalization of industry 
upon, 399-403. 

Civil War, 1861-65, place in Amer- 
ican History of, 9-10, 18; fun- 
damental causes of, 282-6; 
immediate causes of, 284-296; 
outbreak of, 297-307; military 
aspects of, 308-316; why won 
by the North, 317-339; resulta 
of, 340-359; results on the 
North, 340-351 ; on economic 
condition of the South. 351-9. 

Clay, Henry, in W^ar of 1812, 206; 
responsible for the "American 
System," 216-218; on union in 
1820, 220; on elections of 1824 
and 1832, 232-4; creator of leg- 
islative system in House of Rep- 
resentatives, 236-7; on slavery 
in border States, 244; on Com- 
promise of 1850, 267; death of, 
268. 

Colonists, character of, Spanish, 
13-14; French, 16; English, 26, 
33-7 ; Dutch, 27-8. 

Columbus, 11, 17. 

Commerce, colonial, 38-44, 73, 81- 
4, 93; after the Revolution, 
152-5; interstate commerce af- 
ter 1783, 155-6; foreign com- 
merce after 1783, 163-4, 183, 
196-200, 205, 211-216. 
407 



408 



INDEX 



Committees of Correspondence, 97- 
104, 107-8, 114-116. 

Companies, joint-stock or trading, 
19, 20, 22, 24, 25, 50-5. 

Compromise, Missouri, 21S-220, 
259, 270, 271, 274; on tariif and 
Bank, 227-228; of 1850, 262-9; 
attempts in 1860 and 1861, 299- 
302; meaning of in American 
History, 284-7. 

Concord, battle of, 103-4, 124, 137. 

Confederacy, Southern, early pro- 
posals of, 223, 266, 282-4; 
causes of formation of in 1860, 
284-296; formation of, 297-9; 
negotiates with United States 
government in 1861, 303-4; mili- 
tary aspects of war with North, 
308-316; why defeated in, 317- 
339; administrative weaknesses 
of, 324-5, 326-9 ; economic weak- 
ness of, 325-6; financial mis- 
management of, 329-331. 

Confederation, government under 
the Articles of, 122, 147, 148, 
159-162, 196. 

Constitution, causes of its adop- 
tion, 116, 145-167; precedent 
for the form of, 120, 168; pro- 
visions of, 168-179; adoption of, 
179-181; interpretation of in 
1830, 223-7; expansion of, 1789- 
1829, 229-239; made a national 
bond by Civil War, 340-2, 345. 

Cotton, beginning of production 
of, 212-213; growth of culture 
of, 241-5; method of cultivation 
of, 242, 255; creates new inter- 
est in western lands, 243-4, 255, 
257; extension of territory de- 
manded, 257-260, 262-4, 267, 
270-271, 286-8; relation of to 
secession in 1860, 292-4, 317; 
why it did not decide the Civil 
War in favor of the South, 322- 
4 ; results of the Civil War upon 
the culture of, 351-3, 372-3, 
388-9, 391. 
Creditor class, origin of, 43-4; in 



Revolution, 95-6, 111-116; in 
Critical Period, 140-5, 152-7, 
160; after the adoption of the 
Constitution, 184-5, 196-7. 
Currency Problem, colonial, 82; 
during Critical Period, 142-4, 
149, 151, 152, 156, 157, 163; 
Hamilton's solution of, 188-190; 
Jacksonian solution of, 227-8; 
at South during the Civil War, 
329-331; after Civil War, 362, 
381; final solution of, 393-5. 

Davis, Jefi'erson, 266, 268; on 
causes of the Civil War, 284-5, 
294; election as President of the 
Confederacy, 298; as President, 
304, 323, 324, 327-9, 331-3. 

Debtor class, origin of, 43-4; in 
Revolution, 95-6, 111-116; in 
Critical Period, 140-5, 152-7, 
159-160. 

Declaration of Independence, a 
statement of existing fact, 55, 
118-119; passage of, 117-118. 

Democracy colonial, 45-58; in 
1787, 169-179; JeflFersonian, 195, 
229, 230, 234-5, 238; Webster 
on, 225-7, 235-6; Jacksonian, 
229, 230, 234-5, 238; develop- 
ment of, 1789-1850, 229-239; ef- 
fect of immigration upon, 238, 
397-9; effect of nationalization 
of industry upon, 399-402; new 
aspects of, 402-404. 

Democratic Party, against Civil 
War at the North, 337-8; its 
attitude on Reconstruction, 376, 
381, 384, 385; at the South after 
Reconstruction, 385-388. 

Dickinson, John, 93-4. 

Douglas, S. A., 268; on Kansas, 
270, 272, 274 and note; debates 
with Lincoln, 277-9; supports 
Federal government, 1861, *305. 

Dred Scott Case, 265, 275-7. 

Economic and geographical influ- 
ences on history of the United 



INDEX 



409 



States, on colonial history, 5, 
26, 37, 38, 43, 44, 72; on the 
Revolution, 93, 111-114, 131- 
139; on the formation of the 
Constitution, 158-1G6; on the 
War of 1812, 20G; explain dif- 
ferences between the sections in 
1860, 252-5, 284-5; influence of 
on the Civil War, 308-316, 322- 
3, 352-4; make for nationality, 
347-350, 395-6. 

Emancipation of the Negro, agita- 
tion for, 245-6, 300, 321; procla- 
mation of, 321, 354-6; result of 
upon Reconstruction, 361, 363, 
366, 370-4, 382-6; from eco- 
nomic bondage, 388-390. 

Emigration, causes of European, 
19-22, 24-5, 33-37. 

Exploration of North America, in- 
centive to, 1-4; by Spanish, 11- 
16; by French, 16; by English, 
lG-18, 21-26. 

Fisheries, 29; colonies excluded 
from in 1775, 102; after 1783, 
148, 151, 153, 159, 197, 201-2. 

Franklin, Benjamin, biography 
and character, 59-60; in the 
Revolution, 64, 92-3, 113, 120-2, 
131, 140, 149, 171, 181. 

French Revolution, influence of on 
the history of the United States, 
183, 193, 197-9. 

French colonies, causes of weak- 
ness of, 16, 74, 75; result of cap- 
ture of by English, 74, 76. 

Fur-trade, 25, 29, 35, 258. 

Geographical influences on United 
States history, see Economic In- 
fluences, etc. 

George III, 64, 77, 83, 84, 90, 93, 
100, 101, 109, 129-130. 

Grant, U. S., as General, 314-316, 
333, 337-8; as President, 381. 

Hamilton, Alexander, on vices of 
the Confederation, 160; on the 



Constitution, 168, 178, 180; es- 
tablishes new administration, 
182-192; later years of, 193, 194 
208. 

Hayne, R. Y., debate with Webster, 
223-4. 

Huguenots, 16, 22. 

Independence, growth of idea of, 
94, 96, 106-118; Declaration of, 
see Declaration. 

Indians, condition of in Sixteenth 
Century, 14-15; treatment ot by 
Spaniards, 15; relations of Eng- 
lish with, 23, 26-7, 76-7; rela- 
tions of to United States, 258, 
271. 

Internal Improvements, demanded 
by the West, 214-215, 220-221, 
227. 

Iroquois, 14, 16, 27, 29, 74, 75. 

Jackson, Andrew, at New Orleans, 
210; favors the Union, 226-7; 
democratic ideas of, 229, 230, 
238; in campaigns of 1824 and 
1828, 232-4. 

Jamestown, settlement of, 11, 23, 
28. 

JeflFerson, Thomas, 65, 84, 87, US, 
177; life and personality, 193- 
4; ideas of, 195; as President, 
204, 205, 207, 230. 

Kansas-Nebraska Bill, the Crime 
against Kansas, 270-4. 

Lee, Robert E., 309, 311, 314-316, 
324, 328, 333. 

Lewis and Clark expedition, 17. 

Lexington, battle of, 103-4, 107, 
124. 

Lincoln, Abraham, debates with 
Douglas, 277-9; election of, in 
1860, 296 ; on causes of the Civil 
War, 285; on the object of the 
War, 321; as President, 302- 
306, 319, 334-9; the father of 



410 



INDEX 



American Nationality, 340, 344- 
5; influence of the assassination 
of, 358; Keconstruction policy 
of. 366-7; quoted, 8, 9, 322, 341, 
347-8, 360. 

Louisiana, Purchase of, 38, 203- 
205, 208, 218-219, 259, 262. 

Loyalists, in the Revolution, 92-3, 
100-101, 106-108, 112, 114-116, 
154. 

Madison, James, 150, ISO, 190, 
282. 

Magellan, 12. 

Manufactures, in colonial period, 
38; during War of 1812, 213- 
214; after War of 1812, 211, 
212, 215-218, 248-251; policy of 
protection of adopted, 215-21S, 
221; statistics of in 1860, North 
and South, 291-292; effect of 
Civil War upon at North, 318- 
320; at South, 391; nationaliza- 
tion of, 397. 

Marshall, John, Chief Justice, 178, 
194, 237-8. 

Massachusetts, founding of, 25; 
origin of town and state gov- 
ernment in, 46-8, 50-4, 56; 
States' sovereignty in, 62-4, 65- 
7; opposition to Navigation 
Acts, 68-9; in the Revolution, 
96-106, 107; in the Critical 
Period, 158, 180; in the Civil 
War, 305-6. 

Mexican War, 1846, 257-262. 

Missouri Compromise, 1820, 218- 
220, 259, 270-271, 274. 

Nationality, American, the essence 
of American history lies in the 
achieving of, 5, 6; slo\\'Tiess of 
attainment, 7, 8; no fundamen- 
tal obstacles to, 55;' foundations 
of in independence laid by 
Washington, 59; strength of the 
sentiment against, in 1760, 71- 
2; in 1775, 92, 125-7; in Crit- 
ical Period, 144-8, 170-1; in 



1787, 190-2; in 1812-14, 207- 
210; in 1819-20, 219-220; in 
1824-32, 223-6; adopted as basis 
of Constitution, 172-4, 179; 
Webster, the prophet of, 225-7, 
235-6 ; subconscious beginnings 
of, 1830-60, 239-240; belief in 
at the North a great factor in 
1860, 301; "created" by the 
Civil Wai-, 340-350; Lincoln's 
relation to, 340, 344-5; geo- 
graphical forces making for, 
347-350; Lincoln's appreciation 
of, 347-S notes; Reconstruction 
last obstacle to, 365, 387-8; 
present problems of, 396-404. 

Navigation Acts, in colonial times, 
41, 42, 68, 73, 78; probable re- 
sults in 1765 of enforcement of, 
81-4; enforcement of after 1783, 
153-5, 199, 205. 

Negro, Problem of, during Recon- 
struction, 361, 363, 366, 370-4, 
382-6 ; since Reconstruction, 
388-390. See also Slavery, 
Slave-Trade, Cotton. 

New Amsterdam, 27-8. 

New England, settlement of, 24-6; 
reasons for permanence of, 26- 
30; plans secession, 1804-1815, 
202-203, 207-210. 

North, The, national position of 
in 1861, 9; beginning of cleft 
with the South, 159, 282-3; at- 
titude towards tariff, 215-218, 
221; attitude towards slavery, 
246-8, 269 ; development of man- 
ufactures in, 248-51 ; influence 
of geographical conditions upon, 
252-5, 256 ; attitude towards the 
South and slavery, 246-8, 266- 
281 ; compared with the South 
in 1860, 290-4; stands for union 
in 1861, 301-2, 305-6; party at 
in favor of the South in 1861, 
301, 303-4, 334-5; war with the 
Confederacy, 308-316; why vic- 
torious, 317-339; economic ef- 
fects of War upon, 318-20, 339, 



INDEX 



411 



350-1 ; results of War upon, 
340-351; attitude towards Re- 
construction, 358-60, 364, 366, 
371. 
Nullification, anti-national, 8, 146- 
8, 161-2, 201-2, 205, 208-9, 219- 
220, 223-8, 235-6. 

People, American, meaning of their 
history, 1-10; relation of the 
people to the nation, 5-6; char- 
acter of in 1787, 169-72; Con- 
stitution makes sovereign, 172- 
76; Constitution places checks 
on power of, 176-9; Webster 
proves that Constitution de- 
clares sovereign, 225-7, 235-6; 
character of in 1840, 240; effect 
of Civil War upon, 344-7, 349, 
353, 355. 

Pilgrims, 24-5, 28. 

Population, growth of, 32, 140, 
162, 290-1 ; effect on democracy, 
45-6, 48-54, 238, 397-8. 

Railroads, influence of in develop- 
ment of country before 1860, 
249-252; influence on conduct of 
Civil War, 310, 313-314; influ- 
ence in deciding Civil War, 318, 
321, 325-6; as nationalizers, 
349-50; nationalization of, 397. 

Reconstruction, problem of, 358'- 
366; Presidential Reconstruc- 
tion, 366-8; caiises of Congres- 
sional, 369-376; measures of 
Congressional, 376-381 ; attitude 
of North towards, 358-60, 364, 
366, 371; attitude of South to- 
wards, 367, 373-6, 381-6; re- 
sults of on South, 381-6; last 
obstacle in way of nationality, 
365. 

Representation, ideas of in Amer- 
ica and England contrasted, 88- 
9; progress of ideas about in 
America, 175, 234, 238, 281, 
382-7. 

Republican Party, formation of, 



275; attitude of in 1861, 302; 
result of winning of War upon, 
358-9, 364, 369, 375-6; Con- 
gressional Reconstruction in- 
tended to secure supremacy of, 
375-8, 381-2, 384-5; at the 
South during Reconstruction, 
382-7. 
Revolution, causes of, 31-2, 38, 45, 
56-8, 73-91; outbreak of, 92- 
105; problem of organization 
during, 106-122; why we won, 
123-139; lack of popular sup- 
port for, 106-116, 125-7, 140-2; 
results of, 140-150. 



Secession, anti-national, 8; in 
West, 1786-1803, 202; in Con- 
stitutional Convention, 282-4; 
in Virginia, 1789, 283; in New 
England, 1804-1815, 202-3, 207- 
210, 284; discussion of, 1819- 
20, 220, 284; at the South, 1828, 
223-7; at the South, 1848-60, 
266-7, 295-6; causes of in 1860- 
61, 282-294; relation of to slav- 
ery, 284-290; consummation of, 
1861, 297-9; effect of on Recon- 
struction, 366-7. 

Seward, W. H., 267-8, 303-4, 337. 

Silver, from Peru, a cause of the 
colonization of America, 13, 20; 
from Nevada, helps solution of 
currency problem, 394; Free Sil- 
ver agitation, 395. 

Slave-trade, in colonial times, 40, 
59; revival of urged from 1857- 
9. 260-1, 280; in District of Co- 
lumbia, 265-7. 

Slavery, in colonial times, 40, 49; 
influence of cotton upon, 213, 
218, 241-5; extension of mooted, 
218, 243-4, 257-268; argument 
for extension of, 257-260, 263, 
270-1 ; argument against exten- 
sion of, 261, 264. 269-270, 277- 
9; Pro- and Anti-slavery views 
compared, 245-8; fugitive slaves, 



412 



INDEX 



264-5; geographical influences 
encouraging extension of, 252-6 ; 
Lincoln's views on, 277-9; con- 
nection with secession, 246, 284- 
290; Confederacy based on, 299; 
attempts to compromise difficul- 
ties on, 1861, 299-302; results 
of the War upon, 351-3; abol- 
ished as undemocratic, 354; 
abolition of, 321, 354-6, 368. 

Smith, Captain John, 23. 

Spanish, exploration and coloniza- 
tion by, 4-5, 11-16. 

Smuggling trade with the West 
Indies, 42-3, 78-9, 81-4, 152-5. 

South, The, position in 1861 anti- 
national, 8-9; beginning of cleft 
with the North, 159, 282-3; 
origin of "peculiar institutions" 
of, 212-213, 215, 218, 219; real 
difficulties of economic, 222, 
322-6, 351-4, 388-391; effect of 
cotton and slavery on, 244-5, 
351-4; influence of fundamental 
geographical conditions upon, 
252-5; attitude towards the 
North and secession, 1848-60, 
266, 268-296; compared with 
the North in 1860, 290-4; se- 
cedes in 1861, 297-9; party fa- 
voring union at, 301, 303-4, 339; 
war with the North, 308-316; 
why defeated in, 317-339; re- 
sults of Civil War upon, 340- 
357; reconstruction of, 360-381; 
results of Reconstruction upon, 
382-7 ; solution of • economic 
problems of, 388-391. 

Stamp Act, 82-4. 

State governments, origin of, 50- 
58; new Revolutionary constitu- 
tions for, 119-120; part played 
by in Revolution, 116-119; in 
Critical Period, 144-151, 155- 
158, 162-3; refunding debts of, 
186; in War of 1812, 207-210; 
relation of to Federal govern- 
ment discussed by Webster and 
Hayne, 223-7; new democracy 



in, 1830-60, 229-239. See also 
States' sovereignty. 

States' sovereignty, anti-national, 
8-9; in colonial times, 61-72; 
before the Revolution, 79-80, 
87-8, 92; during the Revolu- 
tion, 108, 116-119; in Critical 
Period, 144-8, 160-2; Constitu- 
tion intended to abolish, 172-4, 
179; belief in, about 1800, 190- 
3; 1804-15, 202, 203, 207-210, 
219 note; discussion of by 
Hayne and Webster, 223-8, 235- 
6; geographical factors favor- 
ing, 255-6, 348-9, 353; belief 
in at South, 1850-60, 268; rela- 
tion to secession, 284-6, 291; 
party at the North in favor of, 
1861, 294, 303-4; Confederate 
constitution establishes, 298 ; 
Confederate government in- 
fringes, 331-3; destroyed by the 
Civil War, 340-350; during Re- 
construction, 361-2, 366-7, 370- 
1, 378; final disappearance of 
probable, 395-6. 

Suffrage, limited in 1787, 89, 175; 
manhood by 1840, 234, 238; ne- 
gro, 381-7. 

Sumter, Fort, firing on the casus 
belli in 1861, 285, 304-5, 307. 

Tariff", 38, 187; origin of protective , 
tariff, 215-218, 221; Southern [ 
opinion of, 221-3; Compromise 
tariff, 227; imposed by Confed- 
erate government, 331. 

Tobacco, in Virginia, 29; method 
of cultivation, 48-9. 

Union, schemes for in colonial 
times, 09-71; idea of during the 
Revolution, 92, 106-122; in Crit- 
ical Period, 145-151; forces 
working for, 1783-7, 158-166; 
forces working against, 1804- 
1815, 202-3, 207-210; its mean- 
ing and value discussed, 1815- 
1848, 219-220, 223-6; De Toc- 



INDEX 



413 



queville on, 226; sentiment re- 
garding at South, 1848-60, 266, 
268-296 ; sentiment regarding 
at the North, 1848-60, 267-296; 
North stands for in 1861, 301, 
302, 305-6; party at South in 
favor of, 1861, 301, 303-4, 334- 
8; Civil War makes adhesion to 
universal, 340-350; Reconstruc- 
tion last obstacle to, 365, 387-8. 
United States, place of its history 
in universal history, 1 ; in Eu- 
ropean history, 2; achieving of 
nationality chief fact in the his- 
tory of, 5; definition of history 
of, 18. 

Virginia, settlement of, 22-4; rea- 
sons for permanence of, 26-30; 
land claims of, 164-6; opposi- 
tion to Constitution in, 179, 
ISO, 283; Resolutions of 1798, 
202; on Compromise of 1850, 
266; secession of, 306; cam- 
paigns ill, 1861-65, 308-311, 
314-316. 

War of 1812, causes of, 196-206; 
why United States was defeated 
in, 206-7; results of, 211-218; 
attitude of New England to- 
wards, 202-3, 207-210. 

Washington, George, early life and 
character, 58-9; in the Revolu- 
tion, 109, 113, 117, 121-139, 
190; as President, 180-2; de- 
scription by Ames, 181; quoted, 



6, 110, 121, 124-139, 141, 145, 
149, 150, 157, 162, 181, 182. 

Webster, Daniel, in the War of 
1812, 206; "1830 Speech," 225- 
7; Prophet of American Nation- 
ality, 225-7, 235-6, 345; on the 
Mexican War, 261 ; on the Com- 
promise of 1850, 267; death of, 
268; quoted, 8. 

Western lands, in 1780, 164-5; 
1815-30, 214-215, 220-1, 227; 
cotton creates new interest in, 
243-4, 255; development of by 
the railroads, 249, 252; reasons 
for the desire to extend slavery 
to, 257-9, 263, 270-1; develop- 
ment of since 1865, 393-6. 

West Indies, vital importance of, 
38, 196; colonial trade with, 
38-44, 73; fear of loss of trade 
with one cause of the Revolu- 
tion, 81-4, 93; results of loss 
of trade with after 1783, 152-5, 
196-8, 201-2, 205; prosperity of 
destroyed, 242. 

West, The, ideas of secession in, 
201-2, 205; development of, 
214-5, 2.52, 257-60; influence of 
geographical conditions upon, 
252-5; development of, 1840-60, 
decisive in effect of the Civil 
War, 318, 321; stands for the 
Union, 1861, 312-314, 317-318, 
321 ; welded to the North by the 
War, 345-6. 

Wilson, James, influential in fram- 
ing the Constitution, 172-3, 190. 

Winthrop, John, 21, 25, 52, 53, 56. 



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